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PALMETTO -LEAVES 



BY 



HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. 



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ILLUSTRATED. 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK: 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY. 



92135 





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Iwo Copies Rcccivfo 




DEC 22 1900 


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SECOMOCOPY 


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(mO€R DIVISION 




DFC 28 IflOn 



Copyright, 1873, 
By JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY. 

Copyright, 1901, 
By CHARLES E. STOWE. 



A// rights reserved. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Nobody's Dog ^ 

A Flowery January in Florida i6 

The Wrong Side of the Tapestry 26 

A Letter to the Girls . , 40 

A Water-Coach, and a Ride in it 53 

Picnicking up Julington 69 

Magnolia 87 

Yellow Jessamines 97 

"Florida for Invalids" . "6 

Swamps and Orange-Trees i37 

Letter-Writing 148 

Magnolia Week 161 

Buying Land in Florida • • 17S 

Our Experience in Crops 185 

May in Florida 196 

St. Augustine 206 

Our Neighbor over the Way 225 

The Grand Tour up River 247 

Old Cudjo and the Angel .267 

The Laborers of the South 279 



' "^ OUINCY 




CHARLOTTE 



MAP OF THE ST. JOHN RIVER, FLORIDA. 







NOBODY'S DOG. 




ES, here he comes again ! Look at 
him ! Whose dog is he ? We are 
sitting around the httle deck-house 
of the Savannah steam.er, in that languid state 
of endurance which befalls voyagers, when, 
though the sky is clear, and the heavens blue, 
and the sea calm as a looking-glass, there is 
yet that gentle, treacherous, sliding rise and fall, 
denominated a ground-swell. 

Reader, do you remember it ? Of all deceit- 



2 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

ful demons of the deep, this same smooth, sh*p- 
pery, cheating ground-swell is the most diabolic. 
Because, you see, he is a mea7t imp, an under- 
handed, unfair, swindling scamp, who takes from 
you all the glory of endurance. Fair to the eye, 
plausible as possible, he says to you, " What's 
the matter? What can you ask brighter than 
this sky, smoother than this sea, more glossy 
and calm than these rippling waves ? How for- 
tunate that you have such an exceptionally 
smooth voyage ! " 

And yet look around the circle of pale faces 
fixed in that grim expression of endurance, the 
hands belonging to them resolutely clasping 
lemons, — those looks of unutterable, repressed 
disgust and endurance. Are these people sea- 
sick "i Oh, no ! of course not. " Of course," 
says the slippery, plausible demon, " these peo- 
ple can't be sick in this delightful weather, and 
with this delightful, smooth sea ! " 



NOBODY'S DOG. 3 

But here comes the dog, now slowly droop- 
ing from one to another, — the most woe-begone 
and dejected of all possible dogs. Not a bad- 
looking dog, either ; not without signs about him 
of good dog blood. 

We say one to another, as we languidly review 
his points, " His hair is fine and curly : he has 
what might be a fine tail, were it not drooping in 
such abject dejection and discouragement. Evi- 
dently this is a dog that has seen better days, — 
a dog that has belonged to somebody, and taken 
kindly to petting." His long nose, and great 
limpid, half-human eyes, have a suggestion of 
shepherd-dog blood about them. 

He comes and seats himself opposite, and 
gazes at you with a pitiful, wistful, intense gaze, 
as much as to say, " Oh ! do you know where 
HE is ? and how came I here t — poor, miserable 
dog that I am ! " He walks in a feeble, discour- 
aged way to the wheel-house, and snifis at the 



4 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

salt water that spatters there ; gives one lick, 
and stops, and comes and sits quietly down 
again : it's " no go." 

" Poor fellow ! he's thirsty," says one ; and the 
Professor, albeit not the most nimble of men, 
climbs carefully down the cabin-stairs for a tum- 
bler of water, brings it up, and places it before 
him. Eagerly he laps it all up ; and then, with 
the confiding glance of a dog not unused to 
kindness, looks as if he would like more. 
Another of the party fills his tumbler, and he 
drinks that. 

" Why, poor fellow, see how thirsty he was ! " 
" I wonder whose dog he is .'' " " Somebody ought 
to see to this dog ! " are comments passing 
round among the ladies, who begin throwing 
him bits of biscuit, which he snaps up eagerly. 

" He's hungry too. Only see how hungry he 
is ! Nobody feeds this dog. Whom does he 
belong to } " 



NOBODY'S DOG. 5 

One of the ship's stewards, passing, throws in 
a remark, " That dog's seasick : that's what's the 
matter with him. It won't do to feed that dog; 
it won't : it'll make terrible work." 

Evidently some stray dog, that has come 
aboard the steamer by accident, — looking for a 
lost master, perhaps ; and now here he is alone 
and forlorn. Nobody's dog ! 

One of the company, a gentle, fair-haired 
young girl, begins stroking his rough, dusty hair, 
which though fine, and capable of a gloss if 
well kept, now is full of sticks and straws. An 
unseemly patch of tar disfigures his coat on one 
side, which seems to worry him : for he bites at 
it now and then aimlessly ; then looks up with a 
hopeless, appealing glance, as much as to say, " I 
know I am looking like a fright ; but I can't help 
it. Where is he } and where am 1 1 and what 
does it all mean } " 

But the caresses of the fair-haired lady inspire 



6 PALMETTO^LEA VES. 

him with a new idea. He will be " nobody's 
dog " no longer : he will choose a mistress. 

From that moment he is like a shadow to the 
fair-haired lady : he follows her steps every- 
where, mournful, patient, with drooping tail and 
bowed head, as a dog not sure of his position, 
but humbly determined to have a mistress if 
dogged faith and persistency can compass it. 
She walks the deck ; and tick, tick, pitapat, go 
the four little paws after her. She stops : 
he stops, and looks wistful. Whenever and 
wherever she sits down, he goes and sits at her 
feet, and looks up at her with eyes of unutterable 
entreaty. 

The stewards passing through the deck-house 
give him now and then. a professional kick ; and 
he sneaks out of one door only to walk quietly 
round a corner and in at the other, and place 
himself at her feet. Her party laugh, and rally 
her on her attractions. She now and then pats 



NOBODY'S DOG. ? 

and caresses and pities him, and gives him 
morsels of biscuit out of her stores. Evidently 
she belongs to the band of dog-lovers. In the 
tedious dulness of the three-days' voyage the dog 
becomes a topic, and his devotion to the fair- 
haired lady an engrossment. 

We call for his name. The stewards call him 
" Jack : " but he seems to run about as well for 
one name as another ; and it is proposed to call 
him "Barnes," from the name of the boat we 
are on. The suggestion drops, from want of 
energy in our very demoralized company to 
carry it. Not that we are seasick, one of us : 
oh, no ! Grimly upright, always at table, and 
eating our three meals a day, who dares intimate 
that we are sick .? Perish the thought ! It is 
only a dizzy, headachy dulness, with an utter 
disgust for every thing in general, that creeps 
over us ; and Jack's mournful face reflects but 
too truly our own internal troubles. 



8 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

But at last here we are at Savannah and the 
Scriven House ; and the obHging waiters rush 
out and take us in and do for us with the most 
exhaustive attention. Here let us remark on 
the differences in hotels. In some you are 
waited on sourly, in some grudgingly, in some 
carelessly, in some with insolent negligence. 
At the Scriven House you are received like 
long-expected friends. Every thing is at your 
hand, and the head waiter arranges all as benig- 
nantly as if he were really delighted to make 
you comfortable. So we had a golden time at 
the Scriven House, where there is every thing 
to make the wayfarer enjoy himself 

Poor Jack was overlooked in the bustle of the 
steamer and the last agonies of getting landed. 
We supposed we had lost sight of him forever. 
-But lo ! when the fair-haired lady was crossing 
the hall to her room, a dog, desperate and dusty, 
fought his way through the ranks of waiters to 
get to her. 



NOBODY'S DOG. 9 

" It isn't our dog ; put him out gently ; don't 
hurt him," said the young lady's father. 

But Jack was desperate, and fought for his 
mistress, and bit the waiter that ejected him, and 
of course got kicked with emphasis into the 
street. 

The next morning, one of our party, looking 
out of the window, saw Jack watching slyly out- 
side of the hotel. Evidently he was waiting for 
an opportunity to cast himself at the feet of his 
chosen protectress. 

'' If I can only see her, all will yet be right," 
he says to himself 

We left Savannah in the cars that afternoon ; 
and the last we hfeard of Jack, he had been seen 
following the carriage of his elected mistress in 
a drive to Bonaventure. 

What was the end of the poor dog's romance 
we have never heard. Whether he is now blessed 
in being somebody's dog, — petted, cared for. 



10 PALMETTO-LEAVES. 

caressed, — or whether he roves the world deso- 
late-hearted as ''nobody's dog," with no lights 
to life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness, we have 
no means of knowing. 

But the measureless depth of dumb sorrow, 
want, woe, entreaty, that there are in a wander- 
ing dog's eyes, is something that always speaks 
much to us, — dogs in particular which seem to 
leave their own kind to join themselves to man, 
and only feel their own being complete when 
they have formed a human friendship. It seems 
like the ancient legends of those incomplete 
natures, a little below humanity, that needed a 
human intimacy to develop them. How much 
dogs suffer mentally is a thing they have no 
words to say ; but there is no sorrow deeper than 
that in the eyes of a homeless, friendless, mas- 
terless dog. We rejoice, therefore, to learn that 
one portion of the twenty thousand dollars 
which the ladies of Boston have raised for " Our 



NOBODY'S DOG. II 

Dumb Animals " is about to be used in keeping 
a home for stray dogs. 

Let no one sneer at this. If, among the " five 
sparrows sold for two farthings," not one is for- 
gotten by our Father, certainly it becomes us 
not to forget the poor dumb companions of our 
mortal journey, capable, with us, of love and its 
sorrows, of faithfulnesss and devotion. There is, 
we are told, a dog who haunts the station at 
Revere, daily looking for the return of a master 
he last saw there, and who, alas ! will never 
return. There are, many times and oft, dogs 
strayed from families, accustomed to kindness 
and petting, who have lost all they love, and have 
none to care for them. To give such a refuge, 
till they find old masters or new, seems only a 
part of Christian civilization. 

The more Christ's spirit prevails, the more we 
feel for all that can feel and suffer. The poor 
brute struggles and suffers with us, companion 



12 PALMETTO-LEAVES. 

of our mysterious travel in this lower world ; and 
who has told us that he may not make a step 
upward in the beyond ? For our own part, we 
like that part of the poor Indian's faith, — 

" That thinks, admitted to yon equal sky, 
His faithful dog shall bear him company." 

So much for poor Jack. Now for Savannah. 
It is the prettiest of Southern cities, laid out in 
squares, planted with fine trees, and with a series 
of little parks intersecting each street, so that 
one can walk on fine walks under trees quite 
through the city, down to a larger park at the 
end of all. Here there is a fountain whose 
charming sculpture reminds one of those in the 
south of France. A belt of ever-blooming 
violets encircles it ; and a well-kept garden of 
flowers, shut in by an evergreen hedge, surrounds 
the whole. It is like a little bit of Paris, and 
strikes one refreshingly who has left New York 
two days before in a whirling snow-storm. 



NOBODY'S DOG. 1 3 

The thing that every stranger in Savannah 
goes to see, as a matter of course, is Bona- 
venture. 

This is an ancient and picturesque estate, 
some miles from the city, which has for years 
been used as a cemetery. 

How shall we give a person who has never 
seen live-oaks or gray moss an idea of it ? 

Solemn avenues of these gigantic trees, with 
their narrow evergreen leaves, their gnarled, 
contorted branches feathered with ferns and 
parasitic plants, and draped with long swaying 
draperies of this gray, fairy-like moss, impress 
one singularly. The effect is solemn and un- 
earthly ; and the distant tombs, urns, and obelisks 
gleaming here and there among the shadows 
make it more impressive. 

Beneath the trees, large clumps of palmetto, 
with their waving green fans, give a tropical 
suggestion to the scene ; while yellow jessamine 



14 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

wreathe and clamber from tree to tree, or weave 
mats of yellow blossoms along the ground. It 
seems a labyrinth of fairy grottoes, and is in 
its whole impression something so unique, that 
no one should on any account miss of seeing it. 

Savannah is so pleasant a city, and the hotels 
there are so well kept, that many find it far 
enough south for all their purposes, and spend 
the winter there. But we are bound farther 
towards the equator, and so here we ponder the 
question of our onward journey. 

A railroad with Pullman sleeping-cars takes 
one in one night from Savannah to Jacksonville, 
Fla. ; then there is a steamboat that takes one 
round by the open sea, and up through the 
mouth of the St. John's River, to Jacksonville. 
Any one who has come to see scenery should 
choose this route. The entrance of the St. 
John's from the ocean is one of the most singu- 
lar and impressive passages of scenery that we 



NOBODY'S DOG, 



15 



ever passed through : in fine weather the sight 
is magnificent. 

Besides this, a smaller boat takes passengers 
to Jacksonville by what is called the inside pass- 
age, — a circuitous course through the network 
of islands that lines the shore. This course also 
ofiers a great deal of curious interest to one new 
to Southern scenery, and has attractions for 
those who dread the sea. By any of these 
courses Florida may be gained in a few hours 
or days, more or less, from Savannah. 




-^S*- 





A FLOWERY JANUARY IN FLORIDA. 

Mandarin, Fla., Jan. 24, 1872. 
:ES, it is done. The winter is over and 
past, and " the time of the singing of 
birds is come." SThey are at it beak 
and claw, — the red-birds, and the cat-birds, and 
the chattering jays, and the twittering sparrows, 
busy and funny and bright. Down in the 
swamp-land fronting our cottage, four calla-lily 
buds are just unfolding themselves ; and in the 
little garden-plat at one side stand rose-geraniums 
and camellias, white and pink, just unfolding. 



16 



A FLOWERY JANUARY. 17 

Right opposite to the window, through which the 
morning sun is pouring, stands a stately orange- 
tree, thirty feet high, with spreading, graceful top, 
and varnished green leaves, full of golden fruit. 
These are the veritable golden apples of the 
Hesperides, — the apples that Atalanta threw in 
the famous race ; and they are good enough to 
be run after. The things that fill the New- York 
market, called by courtesy " oranges," — pithy, 
wilted, and sour, — have not even a suggestion 
of what those golden balls are that weigh down 
the great glo§sy green branches of yonder tree. 
At the tree's foot, Aunt Katy does her weekly 
washing in the open air the winter through. 
We have been putting our tape-measure about 
it, and find it forty-three inches in girth ; and for 
shapely beauty it has no equal. It gives one a 
sort of heart-thrill of possession to say of such 
beauty, " It is mine." No wonder the Scripture 
says, " He that is so impoverished that he hath 



1 8 PALME TTO-LEA VES. 

no oblation chooseth a tree that will not rot." 
The orange-tree is, in our view, the best worthy 
to represent the tree of life of any that grows 
on our earth. It is the fairest, the noblest, the 
most generous, it is the most upspringing and 
abundant, of all trees which the Lord God 
caused to grow eastward in Eden. Its wood is 
white and hard and tough, fit to sustain the 
immense weight of its fruitage. Real good ripe 
oranges are very heavy ; and the generosity of 
the tree inclines it to fruit in clusters. We 
counted, the other day, a cluster of eighteen, 
hanging low, and weighing down the limb. 

But this large orange-tree, and many larger 
than this, which are parts of one orchard, are 
comparatively recent growths. In 1835, every 
one of them was killed even with the ground. 
Then they started up with the genuine pluck of 
a true-born orange-tree, which never says die, 
and began to grow again. Nobody pruned them, 



A FLOWERY JANUARY. 19 

or helped them, or cared much about them any 
way ; and you can see trees that have grown up 
in four, five, and six trunks, — just as the suckers 
sprung up from the roots. Then, when they had 
made some progress, came the orange-insect, and 
nearly killed them down again. The owners of 
the land, discouraged, broke down the fences, 
and moved off; and for a while the land was 
left an open common, where wild cattle browsed, 
and rubbed themselves on the trees. But still, 
in spite of all, they have held on their way 
rejoicing, till now they are the beautiful crea- 
tures they are. Truly we may call them trees 
of the Lord, full of sap and greenness ; full of 
lessons of perseverance to us who get frosted 
down and cut off, time and time again, in our 
lives. Let us hope in the Lord, and be up and 
at it again. 

It is certainly quite necessary to have some 
such example before our eyes in struggling to 



20 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

found a colony here. We had such a hard time 
getting our church and schoolhouse ! — for in 
these primitive regions one building must do for 
both. There were infinite negotiations and 
cases to go through before a site could be 
bought with a clear title ; and the Freedman's 
Bureau would put us up a building where school 
could be taught on week-days, and worship held 
on Sundays : but at last it was done ; and a 
neat, pleasant little place it was. 

We had a little Mason and Hamlin mission- 
ary organ, which we used to carry over on Sun- 
days, and a cloth, which converted the master's 
desk of week-days into the minister's pulpit ; 
and as we had minister, organist, and choir all 
in our own family, we were sure of them at all 
events ; and finally a good congregation was 
being gathered. On week-days a school for 
whites and blacks was taught, until the misman- 
agement of the school-fund had used up the 



A FLOWERY JANUARY. 21 

sum devoted to common schools, and left us 
without a teacher for a year. But this fall 
our friend Mr. D., who had accepted the situa- 
tion of county overseer of schools, had just 
completed arrangements to open again both 
the white and the black schools, when, lo ! in 
one night our poor little schoolhouse was 
burned to the ground, with our Mason and 
Hamlin organ in it. Latterly it had been found 
inconvenient to carry it backward and forward ; 
and so it had been left, locked in a closet, and 
met a fiery doom. We do not suppose any 
malicious incendiarism. There appears evi- 
dence that some strolling loafers had gotten in 
to spend the night, and probably been careless 
of their fire. The southern pine is inflammable 
as so much pitch, and will almost light with the 
scratch of a match. Well, all we had to do was 
to imitate the pluck of the orange-trees, which 
we immediately did. Our neighborhood had 



22 PALME TTO-LEA VES. 

increased by three or four families ; and a meet' 
ing was immediately held, and each one pledged 
himself to raise a certain sum. We feel the 
want of it more for the schoolhouse than even 
for the church. We go on with our Sunday 
services at each other's houses ; but alas for 
the poor children, black and white, growing up 
so fast, who have been kept out of school now a 
year, and who are losing these best months for 
study ! To see people who are willing and 
anxious to be taught growing up in ignorance 
is the sorest sight that can afflict one ; and we 
count the days until we shall have our church 
and schoolhouse again. But, meanwhile. Man- 
darin presents to our eyes a marvellously im- 
proved aspect. Two or three large, handsome 
houses are built up in our immediate neighbor- 
hood. Your old collaborator of " The Christian 
Union " has a most fascinating place a short dis- 
tance from us, commanding a noble sweep of 



A FLOWERY JANUARY. 23 

view up and down the river. On oar right hand, 
two gentlemen from Newark have taken each a 
lot ; and the gables of the house of one of them 
overlook the orange-trees bravely from the river. 

This southern pine, unpainted, makes a rich, 
soft color for a house. Being merely oiled, it 
turns a soft golden brown, which harmonizes 
charmingly with the landscape. 

How cold is it here "? We ask ourselves, a 
dozen times a day, '' What season is it ? " We 
say, " This spring," " This summer," and speak 
of our Northern life as "last winter." There 
are cold nights, and, occasionally, white frosts : 
but the degree of cold may be judged from the 
fact that the Calla Ethiopica goes on budding 
and blossommg out of doors ; that La Marque 
roses have not lost their leaves, and have long, 
young shoots on them ; and that our hand- 
maiden, a pretty, young mulattress, occasionally 
brings to us a whole dish of roses and buds 



24 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

which her devoted has brought her from some 
back cottage in the pine-woods. We have also 
eaten the last fresh tomatoes from the old vines 
since we came ; but a pretty severe frost has 
nipped them, as well as cut off a promising lot 
of young peas just coming into pod. But the 
pea-vines will still grow along, and we shall 
have others soon. 

We eat radishes out of the ground, and let- 
tuce, now and then, a little nipped by the frost ; 
and we get long sprays of yellow jessamine, just 
beginning to blossom in the woods. 

Yes, it is spring ; though still it is cold 
enough to make our good bright fire a rallying- 
point to the family. It is good to keep fire in a 
country where it is considered a great point to 
get rid of wood. One piles and heaps up with a 
genial cheer when one thinks, " The more you 
burn, the better." It only costs what you pay 
for cutting and hauling. We begin to find our 



A FLOWERY JANUARY. 2$ 

usual number of letters, wanting to know all 
this, that, and the other, about Florida. All 
in good time, friends. Come down here once, 
and use your own eyes, and you will know more 
than we can teach you. Till when, adieu. 




THE WRONG SIDE OF THE TAPESTRY. 




^T is not to be denied that full half of the 
tourists and travellers that come to 
Florida return intensely disappointed, 
and even disgusted. Why ? Evidently because 
Florida, like a piece of embroidery, has two sides 
to it, — one side all tag-rag and thrums, without 
order or position ; and the other side showing 
flowers and arabesques and brilliant coloring. 
Both these sides exist. Both are undeniable, un- 
disputed facts, not only in the case of Florida, but 
of every place and thing under the sun. There 
26 



THE WRONG SIDE. 2/ 

is a right side and a wrong side to every 
thing. 

Now, tourists and travellers generally come 
with their heads full of certain romantic ideas 
of waving palms, orange-groves, flowers, and 
fruit, all bursting forth in tropical abundance ; 
and, in consequence, they go through Florida 
with disappointment at every step. If the banks 
of the St. John's were covered with orange- 
groves, if they blossomed every month in the 
year, if they were always loaded with fruit, if 
pine-apples and bananas grew wild, if the flowers 
hung in festoons from tree to tree, if the ground 
were enamelled with them all winter long, so that 
you saw nothing else, then they would begin to 
be satisfied. 

But, in point of fact, they find, in approaching 
Florida, a dead sandy level, with patches be- 
hind them of rough coarse grass, and tall pine- 
trees, whose tops are so far in the air that they 



28 PALMETTO-LEAVES. 

seem to cast no shade, and a little scrubby under- 
brush. The few houses to be seen along the 
railroad are the forlornest of huts. The cattle 
that stray about are thin and poverty-stricken, 
and look as if they were in the last tottering 
stages of starvation. 

Then, again, winter, in a semi-tropical region, 
has a peculiar desolate untidiness, from the fact 
that there is none of that clearing of the trees 
and shrubs which the sharp frosts of the 
northern regions occasion. Here the leaves, 
many of them, though they have lost their 
beauty, spent their strength, and run their 
course, do not fall thoroughly and cleanly, but 
hang on in ragged patches, waiting to be 
pushed off by the swelling buds of next year. 
In New England, Nature is an up-and-down, 
smart, decisive house-mother, that has her times 
and seasons, and brings up her ends of life with 
a positive jerk. She will have no shilly-shally, 



THE WRONG SIDE. 29 

When her time comes, she clears off the gardens 
and forests thoroughly and once for all, and they 
are clean. Then she freezes the ground solid as 
iron ; and then she covers all up with a nice 
pure winding-sheet of snow, and seals matters 
up as a good housewife does her jelly tumblers 
under white-paper covers. There you are fast 
and cleanly. If you have not got ready for it, 
so much the worse for you ! If your tender 
roots are not taken up, your cellar banked, your 
doors hsted, she can't help it : it's your own 
lookout, not hers. 

But Nature down here is an easy, demoralized, 
indulgent old grandmother, who has no particu- 
lar time for any thing, and does every thing 
when she happens to feel like it. " Is it winter, 
or isn't it ? " is the question that is likely often to 
occur in the settling month of December, when 
everybody up North has put away summer 
clothes, and put all their establishments under 
winter-orders. 



30 PALME TTO-LEA VES. 

Consequently, on arriving in mid-winter time, 
the first thing that strikes the eye is the ragged, 
untidy look of the foliage and shrubbery. 
About one-third of the trees are deciduous, and 
stand entirely bare of leaves. The rest are 
evergreen, which by this time, having come 
through the fierce heats of summer, have ac- 
quired a seared and dusky hue, different from 
the vivid brightness of early spring. In the 
garden you see all the half-and-half proceedings 
which mark the indefinite boundaries of the 
season. The rose-bushes have lost about half 
their green leaves. Some varieties, however, in 
this climate, seem to be partly evergreen. The 
La Marque and the crimson rose, some- 
times called Louis Philippe, seem to keep their 
last year's foliage till spring pushes it off with 
new leaves. 

Once in a while, however. Nature, like a 
grandmother in a fret, comes down on you with 



THE WRONG SIDE. 3 1 

a most unexpected snub. You have a cold spell, 
— an actual frost. During the five years in 
which we have made this our winter residence, 
there have twice been frosts severe enough to 
spoil the orange-crop, though not materially 
injuring the trees. 

This present winter has been generally a 
colder one than usual ; but there have been no 
hurtful frosts. But one great cause of dis- 
gust and provocation of tourists in Florida is 
the occurrence of these "cold snaps." It is 
really amusing to see how people accustomed to 
the tight freezes, the drifting snow wreaths, the 
stinging rain, hail, and snow, of the Northern 
winter, will take on when the thermometer goes 
down to 30^ or 32^, and a white frost is seen out 
of doors. They are perfectly outraged. ^'Such 
weather ! If this is your Florida winter, deliver 
me ! " All the while they could walk out any 
day into the woods, as we have done, and gather 



32 PALMETTO-LEAVES. 

eight or ten varieties of flowers blooming in the 
open air, and eat radishes and lettuce and peas 
grown in the garden. 

Well, it is to be confessed that the cold of 
warm climates always has a peculiarly aggravat- 
ing effect on the mind. A warm region is just 
like some people who get such a character for 
good temper, that they never can indulge them- 
selves even in an earnest disclaimer without 
everybody crying out upon them, "What puts 
you in such a passion ? " &c. So Nature, if she 
generally sets up for amiability during the win- 
ter months, cannot be allowed a little tiff now 
and then, a white frost, a cold rain-storm, with- 
out being considered a monster. 

It is to be confessed that the chill of warm 
climates, when they are chilly, is pecuHar ; and 
travellers should prepare for it, not only in mind, 
but in wardrobe, by carrying a plenty of warm 
clothing, and, above all, an inestimable India- 



THE WRONG SIDE. 33 

rubber bottle, which they can fill with hot water 
to dissipate the chill at night. An experience 
of four winters leads us to keep on about the 
usual winter clothing until March or April. The 
first day after our arrival, to be sure, we put 
away all our furs as things of the past ; but we 
keep abundance of warm shawls, and, above all, 
wear the usual flannels till late in the spring. 

Invalids seeking a home here should be par- 
ticularly careful to secure rooms in which there 
can be a fire. It is quite as necessary as at the 
North ; and, with this comfort, the cold spells, few 
in number as they are, can be easily passed by. 

Our great feature in the Northern landscape, 
which one never fails to miss and regret here, is 
the grass. The nakedness of the land is an 
expression that often comes over one. The 
peculiar sandy soil is very difficult to arrange in 
any tidy fashion. You cannot make beds or 
alleys of it : it all runs together like a place 
3 



34 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

where hens have been scratching ; and conse- 
quently it is the most difficult thing in the 
world to have ornamental grounds. 

At the North, the process of making a new 
place appear neat and inviting is very rapid. 
One season of grass-seed, and the thing is done. 
Here, however, it is the most difficult thing in 
the world to get turf of any sort to growing. 
The Bermuda grass, and a certain coarse, broad- 
leafed turf, are the only kind that can stand the 
summer heat ; and these never have the beauty 
of well-ordered Northern grass. 

Now, we have spent anxious hours and much 
labor over a little plot in our back-yard, which 
we seeded with white clover, and which, for a 
time, was green and lovely to behold ; but, alas ! 
the Scripture was too strikingly verified : 
" When the sun shineth on it with a burning 
heat-, it withereth the grass, and the grace of 
the fashion of it perisheth." 



THE WRONG SIDE. 35 

The fact is, that people cannot come to heartily 
like Florida till they accept certain deficiencies 
as the necessary shadow to certain excellences. 
If you want to live in an orange-orchard, you 
must give up wanting to live surrounded by 
green grass. When we get to the new heaven 
and the new earth, then we shall have it all right. 
There we shall have a climate at once cool and 
bracing, yet hot enough to mature oranges and 
pine-apples. Our trees of life shall bear twelve 
manner of fruit, and yield a new one every 
month. Out of juicy meadows green as emerald, 
enamelled with every kind of flower, shall grow 
our golden orange-trees, blossoming and fruiting 
together as now they do. There shall be no 
mosquitoes, or gnats, or black-flies, or snakes ; 
and, best of all, there shall be no fretful people. 
Everybody shall be like a well-tuned instrument, 
all sounding in accord, and never a semit;one out 
of the way. 



36 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

Meanwhile, we caution everybody coming to 
Florida, Don't hope for too much. Because you 
hear that roses and callas blossom in the open 
air all winter, and flowers abound in the woods, 
don't expect to find an eternal summer. Prepare 
yourself to see a great deal that looks rough 
and desolate and coarse ; prepare yourself foi - 
some chilly days and nights ; and, whatever else 
you neglect to bring with you, bring the resolu- 
tion, strong and solid, always to make the best 
of things. 

For ourselves, we are getting reconciled to a 
sort of tumble-down, wild, picnicky kind of life, 
— this general happy-go-luckiness which Florida 
inculcates. If we painted her, we should not 
represent her as a neat, trim damsel, with 
starched linen cuffs and collar : she would be 
a brunette, dark but comely, with gorgeous 
tissues, a general disarray and dazzle, and with 
a sort of jolly untidiness, free, easy, and joyous. 



THE WRONG SIDE. 37 

The great charm, after all, of this life, is its 
outdoorness. To be able to spend your winter 
out of doors, even though some days be cold ; 
to be able to sit with windows open ; to hoar 
birds daily ; to eat fruit from trees, and pick 
flowers from hedges, all winter long, — is about 
the whole of the story. This you can do ; and 
this is why Florida is life and health to the 
invalid. 

We get every year quantities of letters 
from persons of small fortunes, asking our 
advice whether they had better move to Florida. 
For our part, we never advise people to move 
anywhere. As a general rule, it is the person 
who feels the inconveniences of a present posi- 
tion, so as to want to move, who will feel the in- 
convenience of a future one. Florida has a 
lovely winter ; but it has also three formidable 
summer months, July, August, and September, 
when the heat is excessive, and the liabilities of 



38 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

new settlers to sickness so great, that we should 
never wish to take the responsibility of bringing 
anybody here. It is true that a very comforta- 
ble number of people do live through them ; 
but still it is not a joke, by any means, to move 
to a new country. The first colony in New 
England lost just half its members in the first 
six months. The rich bottom-lands around 
Cincinnati proved graves to many a family 
before they were brought under cultivation. 

But Florida is peculiarly adapted to the needs 
of people who can afford two houses, and want a 
refuge from the drain that winter makes on the 
health. As people now have summer-houses at 
Nahant or Rye, so they might, at a small ex- 
pense, have winter-houses in Florida, and come 
here and be at home. That is the great charm, 
— to be at home. A house here can be simple 
and inexpensive, and yet very charming. 
Already, around us a pretty group of winter- 



THE WRONG SIDE. 39 

houses is rising: and we look forward to the 
time when there shall be many more ; when, all 
along the shore of the St. John's, cottages and 
villas shall look out from the green trees. 





A LETTER TO THE GIRLS. 

Mandarin, Fla., Feb. 13, 1872. 
|ES, the girls! Let me see: who are 
they ? I mean j/ozi, NelUe, and Mary, 
and Emily, and Charlotte, and Gra- 
cie, and Susie, and Carry, and Kitty, and you 
of every pretty name, my charming little Pussy 
Willow friends ! Dear souls all, I bless your 
bright eyes, and fancy you about me as a sort 
of inspiration to my writing. I could wish you 
were every one here. Don't you wish that 
"The Arabian Nights'* were true.? and that 



40 



A LETTER TO THE GIRLS. 41 

there were really little square bits of enchanted 
carpet, on which one has only to sit down 
and pronounce two cabalistic words, and away 
one goes through the air, sailing off on visits ? 
Then, girls, wouldn't we have a nice wide bit 
of carpet ? and wouldn't we have the whole 
bright flock of you come fluttering down 
together to play croquet with us under the 
orange-trees this afternoon ? And, while you 
were waiting for your turns to come, you should 
reach up and pull down a bough,.and help your- 
selves to oranges ; or you should join a party 
now going out into the pine-woods to gather 
yellow jessamine. To-day is mail-day ; and, as 
the yellow jessamine is in all its glory, the girls 
here are sending little boxes of it North to their 
various friends through the mail. They have 
jujst been bringing in long wreaths and clusters 
of it for me to look at, and are consulting how 
to pack it. Then this afternoon, when we have 



42 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

done croquet, it is proposed that we form a party 
to visit Aunt Katy, who lives about two miles 
away in the pine-woods, "over on Julington" as 
the people here say. " On Julington " means on 
a branch of the St. John's named Julington 
Creek, although it is as wide as the Connecticut 
River at Hartford. We put the oldest mule to 
an old wagon, and walk and ride alternately ; 
some of us riding one way, and some the other. 
The old mule, named Fly, is a worn-out, 
ancient patriarch, who, having worked all his 
days without seeing any particular use in it, is 
now getting rather misanthropic in his old age, 
and obstinately determined not to put one foot 
before the other one bit faster than he is actually 
forced to do. Only the most vigorous urging 
can get him to step out of a walk, although we 
are told that the rogue has a very fair trot at his 
command. If any of the darky tribe are be- 
hind him, he never thinks of doing any thing 



A LETTER TO THE GIRLS. 43 

but pricking up his ears, and trotting at a decent 
pace ; but, when only girls and women are to the 
fore, down flop his ears, down goes his head, 
and he creeps obstinately along in the afore- 
mentioned contemplative manner, looking, for all 
the world, like a very rough, dilapidated old hair- 
trunk in a state of locomotion. 

Well, I don't blame him, poor brute ! Life, I 
suppose, is as much a mystery to him as to the 
philosophers; and he has never been able to 
settle what it is all about, this fuss of being 
harnessed periodically to impertinent carts, and 
driven here and there, for no valuable purpose 
that he can see. 

Such as he is, Fly is the absolute property of 
the girls and women, being past farm-work ; and 
though he never willingly does any thing but 
walk, yet his walk is considerably faster than 
that of even the most agile of us, and he is by 
many degrees better than nothing. He is ad' 



44 PALMETTO-LEAVES. 

mitted on all hands to be a safe beast, and will 
certainly never run away with any of us. 

As to the choice of excursions, there are 
several, — one to our neighbor Bowens ^o ?ee 
sugar-making, where we can watch the vvhole 
process, from the grinding of the cane through 
the various vats and boilers, till at last we see 
the perfected sugar in fine, bright, straw-colored 
crystals in the sugar-house. We are hospitably 
treated to saucers of lovely, amber-colored sirup 
just on the point of crystallization, — liquid 
sugar-candy, — which, of course, we do not turn 
away from. Then, again, we can go down the 
banks of the river to where our neighbor Dun- 
can has cleared up a little spot in what used 
to be virgin forest, and where now a cosey little 
cottage is beginning to peep through its many 
windows upon the river-view. Here a bright 
little baby — a real little Florida flower — has 
lately opened a pair of lovely eyes, and is growing 



A LETTER TO THE GIRLS. 45 

daily in grace and favor. In front of this cottage; 
spared from the forest, are three great stately 
magnolias, such trees as you never saw. Their 
leaves resemble those of the India-rubber tree, — 
large, and of a glossy, varnished green. They 
are evergreen, and in May are covered with 
great white blossoms, something like pond-lilies, 
and with very much the same odor. The trees 
at the North called magnolias give no idea what- 
ever of what these are. They are giants among 
flowers ; seem worthy to be trees of heaven. 

Then there are all sorts of things to be got 
out of the woods. There are palmetto-leaves to 
be pressed and dried, and made into ians ; there 
is the long wire-grass, which can be sewed into 
mats, baskets, and various little fancy articles, 
by busy fingers. Every day brings something 
to explore the woods for : not a day in winter 
passes that you cannot bring home a reasonable 
little nosegay of flowers. Many of the flowers 



46 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

here do not have their seasons, but seem to bloom 
the year round : so that, all the time, you are sure 
of finding something. The woods now are full 
of bright, delicate ferns that no frosts have 
touched, and that spring and grow perennially. 
The book of Nature here is never shut and 
clasped with ice and snow as at the North ; and, 
of course, we spend about half our time in the 
open air. 

The last sensation of our circle is our red- 
bird. We do not approve of putting free birds 
in cages ; but Aunt Katy brought to one of our 
party such a beautiful fellow, so brilliant a red, 
with such a smart, black crest on his head, and 
such a long, flashing red tail, that we couldn't 
resist the desire to keep him a little while, just 
to look at him. Aunt Katy insisted that he 
wouldn't take it to heart ; that he would be tame 
in a few days, and eat out of our hands : in 
short, she insisted that he would consider him- 
self a fortunate bird to belong to us. 



A LETTER TO THE GIRLS. 47 

Aunt Katy, you must know, is a nice old lady. 
We use that term with a meaning ; for, though 
"black as the tents of Kedar," she is a per- 
fect lady in her manners: she was born and 
brought up, and has always lived, in this 
neighborhood, and knows every bird in the 
forest as familiarly as if they were all her own 
chickens ; and she has great skill in getting them 
to come to her to be caught. 

Well, our red-bird was named Phoebus, of a 
kind that Audubon calls a cardinal-grossbeak ; 
and a fine, large, roomy cage was got down for 
him, which was of old tenanted by a very merry 
and rackety cat-bird ; and then the question 
arose, " What shall we do with him ? " For you 
see, girls, having a soft place in our heart for all 
pets, instead of drowning some of our kittens in 
the fall, as reasonable people should, we were 
seduced by their gambols and their prettiness to 
let them all grow up together ; and the result is, 



48 PALMETTO-LEAVES. 

that we have now in our domestic retinue foui 
adult cats of most formidable proportions, 
" These be the generations " of our cats : first, 
Liz, the mother ; second, Peter, her oldest son ; 
third, Anna and Lucinda, her daughters. Peter 
is a particularly martial, combative, obnoxious 
beast, very flufify and fussy, with great, full- 
moon, yellow eyes, and a most resounding, 
sonorous voice. There is an immense deal of 
cat in Peter. He is concentrated cathood, a 
nugget of pure cat ; and in fact we are all a 
little in awe of him. He rules his mother and 
sisters as if he had never heard of Susan 
Anthony and Mrs. Stanton. Liz, Anna, and 
Lucinda are also wonderfully-well-developed cats, 
with capital stomachs. Now comes the prob- 
lem : the moment the red-bird was let into his 
cage, there was an instant whisk of tails, and a 
glare of great yellow eyes, and a sharpening of 
eye-teeth, that marked a situation. The Scrip- 



A LETTER TO THE GIRLS. 49 

ture tells us a time is coming when the lion shah 
lie down with the lamb ; but that time hasn't 
come in Florida. Peter is a regular heathen, 
and hasn't the remotest idea of the millennium. 
He has much of the lion in him ; but he never 
could lie down peaceably with the lamb, unless 
indeed the lamb were inside of him, when he 
would sleep upon him without a twinge of con- 
science. Unmistakably we could see in his eyes 
that he considered Phoebus as caught for his 
breakfast ; and he sat licking his chops inquir- 
ingly, as who should ask, " When will the cloth 
be laid, and things be ready t " 

Now, the party to whom the red-bird was 
given is also the patron-saint, the " guide, phi- 
losopher, and friend," of the cats. It is she who 
examines the plates after each meal, and treas- 
ures fragments, which she cuts up and prepares 
for their repast with commendable regularity. It 
is she who presides and keeps order at cat- 



50 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

meals ; and forasmuch as Peter, on account of 
his mascuHne strength and rapacity, is apt to get 
the better of his mother and sisters, she picks 
him up, and bears him growHng from the board, 
when he has demoHshed his own portion, and is 
proceeding to eat up theirs. 

Imagine, now, the cares of a woman with four 
cats and a bird on her mind ! Phoebus had to 
be carefully pinned up in a blanket the first 
night ; then the cage was swung by strong cords 
from the roof of the veranda. The next morn- 
ing, Peter was found perched on top of it, glaring 
fiendishly. The cage was moved along; and 
Peter scaled a pillar, and stationed himself at the 
side. To be sure, he couldn't get the bird, as 
the slats were too close for his paw to go 
through ; but poor Phoebus seemed wild with 
terror. Was it for this he left his native wilds, — 
to be exposed in a prison to glaring, wild-eyed 
hyenas and tigers ? 



A LETTER TO THE GIRLS. 5 1 

The cats were admonished, chastised, 
" scat "-ed, through all the moods and tenses ; 
though their patroness still serves out their 
commons regularly, determined that they shall 
not have the apology of empty stomachs. 
Phoebus is evidently a philosopher, — a bird of 
strong sense. Having found, after two or three 
days' trial, that the cats can't get him ; having 
clusters of the most delicious rice dangling from 
the roof of his cage, and fine crisp lettuce ver- 
dantly inviting through the bars, — he seems to 
have accepted the situation ; and, when nobody 
is in the veranda, he uplifts his voice in song. 
" What cheer ! what cheer ! " he says, together 
with many Httle twitters and gurgles for which we 
have no musical notes. Aunt Katy promises to 
bring him a little wife before long ; and, if that 
be given him, what shall hinder him from being 
happy.? As April comes in, they shall build 



52 PALMETTO-LEA VES, 

their nest in the cage, and give us a flock of 
little red-birds. 

Well, girls, we are making a long letter ; and 
this must do for this week. 





A WATER-COACH, AND A RIDE IN IT. 

Monday, Feb. 26, 1872. 
'EAR girls, wouldn't you like to 
get into that little white yacht that 
lies dancing and courtesying on the 
blue waters of the St. John's this pleasant Mon- 
day morning ? 

It is a day of days. Spring has come down 
with all her smiles and roses in one hour. The 
great blue sheet of water shimmers and glitters 
like so rnuch liquid /apzs lazuli ; and now the 

S3 



54 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

word comes in from our neighbor, the owner of 
the pleasure-yacht, "Wouldn't you like to go 
sailing ? " 

Of course we should ! That is exactly what 
we do want. And forthwith there is a running 
and a mustering of the clans, and a flapping of 
broad palmetto-hats ; and parties from all the 
three houses file down, and present themselves 
as candidates for pleasure. A great basket of 
oranges is hoisted in, and the white sails spread ; 
and with " Youth at the prow, and Pleasure at 
the helm," away we go, the breezes blowing 
manfully at our sails. The river is about five 
miles from shore to shore, and we have known 
it of old for a most enticing and tricksy cus- 
tomer. It gently wooes and seduces you ; it 
starts you out with all manner of zephyrs, until 
you get into the very middle, two miles from 
land on either side, when down goes your limp 
sail, and the breeze is off on some other errand, 



A WATER-COACH. 55 

and you are left to your reflections. Not imme- 
diately did this happen to us, however ; though, 
when we came to the middle of the river, our 
course was slow enough to give plenty of oppor- 
tunity to discuss the basket of oranges. We 
settle it among us that we will cross to Doctor's 
Lake. This name is given to a wide bayou 
which the river makes, running up into the 
forest for a track of about nine miles. It is a 
famous fishing and hunting region, and a favor- 
ite and chosen abode of the alligators. At the 
farther end of it are said to be swamps where 
they have their lairs, and lay their eggs, and 
hatch out charming young alligators. Just 
at the opening where the river puts into this 
lake are the nets of the shad-fishers, who supply 
the Jacksonville market with that delicious arti- 
cle. We are minded to go over and fill our pro- 
vision-baskets before they go. 

Now we near the opposite shore of the river 



$6 PALME TTO-LEA VES. 

We see the great tuft of Spanish oaks which 
marks the house of the old Macintosh planta- 
tion, once the palmiest in Florida. This de 
mesne had nine thousand acres of land, includ- 
ing in it the Doctor's Lake and the islands 
therein, with all the store of swamps and forests 
and alligators' nests, wild-orange groves, and pal- 
metto-jungles. It was a sort of pride of terri- 
tory that animated these old aboriginal planters ; 
for, of the whole nine thousand acres which 
formed the estate, only about five hundred ever 
were cleared, and subject to cultivation. One of 
these days we are projecting to spend a day pic- 
nicking on this old plantation, now deserted and 
decaying ; and then we can tell you many curious 
things in its history. But now we are coming 
close alongside the shad-nets. We find no fish- 
ermen to traffic with. Discerning a rude hut on 
the opposite side of the bayou, we make for that, 
expecting there to find them. We hail a boy 
who lies idly in a boat by the shore. 



A WATER-COACH. 57 

" Halloo, my fine fellow ! Can you tell us 
where the people are that tend that net ? " 

"■ Don't know," is the reply that comes over 
the water. 

" Can you sell us any fish ? " 

" Got a couple o' trout." 

" Bring *em along." And away we go, rip- 
pling before the breeze ; while the boy, with the 
graceful deliberation which marks the move- 
ments of the native population, prepares to come 
after us. 

" I don't believe he understood," said one. 

" Oh, yes ! He's only taking his time, as they 
all do down here. He'll be along in the course 
of the forenoon." 

At last he comes alongside, and shows a 
couple of great black-looking, goggle-eyed fish, 
which look more like incipient cod or haddock 
than trout. Such as they are, however, we con- 
clude a bargain for them ; and away goes our bo> 



5 8 PALME TTO-LEA VES. 

with fifty cents in his pocket. What he can 
want of fifty cents in a hut on the other side of 
Doctor's Lake is a question. Can he trade with 
alHgators } But he has a boat ; and we foresee 
that that boat will make a voyage across to the 
grocery on the opposite point, where whiskey, 
pork, and flour are sold. Meanwhile we looked 
at the little rude hut again. It was Monday 
morning ; and a string of clothes was fluttering 
on a line, and a good many little garments 
among them. There is a mother, then, and a 
family of children growing up. We noticed the 
sheen of three or four orange-trees, probably 
wild ones, about the house. Now we go rippling 
'ip the bayou, close along by the shore. The 
land is swampy, and the forests glister with the 
shining, varnished leaves of the magnolias ; and 
we saw far within the waving green fans of the 
swamp-palmetto. The gum-trees and water- 
oaks were just bursting into leaf with that daz- 



A WATER-COACH. 59 

zling green of early spring which is almost 
metallic in brilliancy. The maples were throw- 
ing out blood-red keys, — larger and higher- 
colored than the maples of the North. There is 
a whir of wings ; and along the opposite shore 
of the bayou the wild-ducks file in long platoons. 
Now and then a water-turkey, with his long 
neck and legs, varies the scene. There swoops 
down a fish-hawk ; and we see him bearing aloft 
a silvery fish, wriggling and twisting in his 
grasp. We were struck with the similarity of 
our tastes. He was fond of shad : so were we. 
He had a wriggling fish in his claws ; and we 
had a couple flapping and bouncing in the 
basket, over which we were gloating. There 
was but one point of difierence. He, undoubt- 
edly, would eat his fish raw ; whereas we were 
planning to have ours cut in slices, and fried 
with salt pork. Otherwise the fish-hawk and we 
were out on the same errand, with the same 
results. 



6o PALMETTO-LEAVES. 

Yet at first view, I must confess, when we 
saw him rise with a wriggling fish in his claws, 
he struck us as a monster. It seemed a savage 
proceeding, and we pitied the struggling fish, 
while ours were yet flapping in the basket. 
This eating-business is far from pleasant to con- 
template. Every thing seems to be in for it. 
It is " catch who catch can " through all the 
animal kingdom till it comes up to man ; and 
he eats the whole, choosing or refusing as suits 
his taste. One wonders why there was not a 
superior order of beings made to eat us. Mos- 
quitoes and black-flies get now and then a nip, 
to be sure ; but there is nobody provided to 
make a square meal of us, as we do on a wild 
turkey, for example. But speaking of eating, 
and discussing fried fish and salt pork, aroused* 
harrowing reflections in our company. We 
found ourselves at one o'clock in the middle of 
Doctor's Lake, with the dinner-shore at least five 



A WATER-COACH. 6l 

miles away ; and it was agreed, nem. co7t., that it 
was time to put about. The fish-hawk had sug- 
gested dinner-time. 

And now came the beauty of the proceeding. 
We drove merrily out of Doctor's Lake into the 
beautiful blue middle of the St. John's: and 
there the zephyrs gayly whispered, " Good-by, 
friends ; and, when you get ashore, let us know." 
The river was like a molten looking-glass, the 
sun staring steadfastly down. There is nothing 
for it but to get out the oars, and pull strong and 
steady ; and so we do. It is the old trick of this 
St John's, whereby muscular development is 
promoted. First two gentlemen row ; then a 
lady takes one oar, and we work our way along 
to the shore ; but it is full four o'clock before we 
get there. 

As we approach, we pass brisk little nine- 
year-old Daisy, who is out alone in her boat, 
with her doll-carriage and doll. She has been 



62 PALME TTO-LEA VES. 

rowing down to make a morning call on Bes- 
sie, and is now returning. Off on the end of 
the wharf we see the whole family watching 
for our return. The Professor's white beard and 
red fez cap make a striking point in the tableau. 
Our little friend Bob, and even baby and mamma, 
are on the point of observation. It is past four 
o'clock, dinner long over ; and they have all been 
wondering what has got us. We walk straight 
up to the house, with but one idea, — dinner. 
We cease to blame the fish-hawk, being in a con- 
dition fully to enter into his feelings : a little 
more, and we could eat fish as he does, — without 
roasting. Doubtless he and Mrs. Fish-hawk, and 
the little Fish-hawks, may have been discussing 
us over their savory meal ; but we find little to 
say till dinner is despatched. 

The last hour on board the boat had been 
devoted to a course of reflections on our folly in 
starting out without luncheon, and to planning a 



A WATER-COACH. 63 

more advised excursion up Julington Creek with 
all the proper paraphernalia ; viz., a kerosene- 
stove for making coffee, an embankment of ham- 
sandwiches, diversified with cakes, crackers, and 
cheese. This, it is understood, is to come off 
to-morrow morning. 

Tuesday Morning, Feb. 27. — Such was to 
have been my programme ; but, alas ! this morn- 
ing, though the day rose bright and clear, there 
was not a breath of wind. The river has looked 
all day like a sheet of glass. There is a drowsy, 
hazy calm over every thing. All our windows 
and doors are open ; and every sound seems to be 
ringingly distinct. The chatter and laughing of 
the children, (God bless 'em !) who are all day 
long frolicking on the end of the wharf, or rowing 
about in the boats ; the leisurely chip, chip, of 
the men who are busy in mending the steamboat 
wharf; the hammer of the carpenters on the yet 
unfinished part of our neighbor's house ; the 



64 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

scream of the jays in the orange-trees, — all 
blend in a sort of dreamy indistinctness. 

To-day is one of the two red-letter days of 
our week, — the day of the arrival of the mail. 
You who have a driblet two or three times a day 
from the mail cannot conceive the interest that 
gathers around these two weekly arrivals. The 
whole forenoon is taken up with it. We sit on 
the veranda, and watch the mail-boat far down 
the river, — a mere white speck as she passes 
through the wooded opening above Jacksonville. 
She grows larger and larger as she comes sail- 
ing up like a great white stately swan, first on 
the farther side of the river till she comes to 
Reed's Landing ; and then, turning her white 
breast full toward Mandarin Wharf, she comes 
ploughing across, freighted with all our hopes 
and fears. Then follows the rush for our mail ; 
then the distribution : after which all depart to 
their several apartments with their letters. 



A WATER-COACH. 65 

Then follow readings to each other, general 
tidings and greetings ; and when the letters are 
all read twice over, and thoroughly discussed, 
come the papers. Tuesday is "The Christian 
Union " day, as well as the day for about a dozen 
other papers ; and the Professor is seen hence- 
forward with bursting pockets, like a very large 
carnation bursting its calyx. He is a walking 
mass of papers. 

The afternoon has been devoted to reflection, 
gossiping, and various expeditions. B. and G. 

have gone boating with Mr. ; and come 

home, on the edge of the evening, with the ani- 
mating news that they have seen the two first 
alligators of the season. That shows that warm 
weather is to be expected ; for your alligator is a 
delicate beast, and never comes out when there 
is the least danger of catching cold. Another 
party have been driving " Fly " through the 
woods to Julington Creek, and come back re- 
5 



66 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

porting that they have seen an owl. The Pro- 
fessor gives report of having seen two veritable 
wild-turkeys and a blue crane, — news which 
touches us all tenderly ; for we have as yet had 
not a turkey to our festive board. We ourselves 
have been having a quiet game of croquet out 
under the orange-trees, playing till we could 
see the wickets no longer. So goes our day, — 
breezy, open-aired, and full of variety. Your 
world, Mr. Union, is seen in perspective, far off 
and hazy, like the opposite shores of the river. 
Nevertheless, this is the place to read papers 
and books ; for every thing that sweeps into this 
quiet bay is long and quietly considered. We 
shall have something anon to say as to how you 
all look in the blue perspective of distance. 

Meanwhile, we must tell the girls that Phoe- 
bus has wholly accommodated himself to his 
situation, and wakes us, mornings, with his sing- 
ing. " What cheer ! what cheer ! " he says. 



A WATER-COACH. 67 

Whether he alludes to the four cats, or to his 
large cage, or to his own internal determination, 
like Mark Tapley, to be jolly, isn't evident. 

Last week. Aunt Katy brought a mate for 
him, which was christened Luna. She was a 
pretty creature, smaller, less brilliant, but 
gracefully shaped, and with a nice crest on her 
head. We regret to say that she lived only a 
few hours, being found dead in the cage in the 
morning. A day or two since, great sympathy 
was expressed for Phoebus, in view of the matri- 
monial happiness of a pair of red-birds who 
came to survey our yellow jessamine with a view 
to setting up housekeeping there. Would not 
the view of freedom and wedded joys depress his 
spirits ? Not a bit of it. He is evidently cut 
out for a jolly bachelor ; and, as long as he has 
fine chambers and a plenty of rough rice, what 
cares he for family life.'' The heartless fellow 
piped up, " What cheer ! what cheer ! " the very 



68 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

day that he got his cage to himself. Is this pecu- 
liar? A lady at our table has stated it as a 
universal fact, that, as soon as a man's wife dies, 
he immediately gets a new suit of clothes. 
Well, why shouldn't he } Nothing conduces 
more to cheerfulness. On the whole, we think 
Phoebus is a pattern bird. 

P. S. — Ask the author of " My Summer in a 
Garden " if he can't condense his account of 
" Calvin's " virtues into a tract, to be distributed 
among our cats. Peter is such a hardened sin- 
ner, a little Calvinism might operate well on 
him. 



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PICNICKING UP JULINGTON. 

Mandarin, Fla., Feb. 29, 1872. 
HIS twenty-ninth day of February is 
a day made on purpose for a fishing- 
party. A day that comes only once 
in four years certainly ought to be good for 
something ; and this is as good a day for pic- 
nicking up Julington as if it had been bespoken 
four years ahead. A bright sun, a blue sky, a 
fresh, strong breeze upon the water, — these are 
Nature's contributions. Art contributes two 

69 



70 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

trim little white yachts, " The Nelly " and " The 
Bessie," and three row-boats. Down we all 
troop to the landing with our luncheon-baskets, 
kerosene-stove, tea-kettle, and coffee-pot, baskets 
of oranges, and fishing-reels. 

Out flutter the sails, and away we go. No dan- 
ger to-day of being left in the lurch in the middle 
of the river. There is all the breeze one wants, 
and a little more than the timorous love ; and 
we go rippling and racing through the water in 
merry style. The spray flies, so that we need 
our water-proofs and blankets ; but the more the 
merrier. We sweep gallantly first by the cot- 
tage of your whilom editor in " The Union," and 

get a friendly salute ; and then flutter by D 's 

cottage, and wave our handkerchiefs, and get 
salutes in return. Now we round the point, and 
Julington opens her wide blue arms to receive us. 

We pass by Neighbor H 's, and again wave 

our handkerchiefs, and get answering salutes. 



PICNICKING UP JULINGTON. /I 

We run up to the wharf to secure another boat 

and oarsman in the person of Neighbor P , 

and away we fly up Julington. A creek it is 
called, but fully as wide as the Connecticut at 
Hartford, and wooded to the water on either 
side by these glorious Florida forests. 

It is a late, backward spring for Florida ; and 
so these forests are behindhand with their 
foliage : yet so largely do they consist of bright 
polished evergreen trees, that the eye scarcely 
feels the need of the deciduous foliage on which 
the bright misty green of spring lies like an 
uncertain vapor. There is a large admixture in 
the picture of the cool tints of the gray moss, 
which drapes every tree, and hangs in long 
pendent streamers waving in the wind. The 
shores of the creek now begin to be lined on 
either side with tracts of a water-lily which the 
natives call bonnets. The blossom is like that 
of our yellow pond-lily ; but the leaves are very 



72 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

broad and beautiful as they float like green 
islands on the blue waters. Here and there, 
even in the centre of the creek, are patches of 
them intermingled with quantities of the water- 
lettuce, — a floating plant which abounds in 
these tracts. Along the edges of these water-lily 
patches are the favorite haunts of the fish, who 
delight to find shelter among the green leaves. 
So the yachts come to anchor ; and the party 
divides into the three row-boats, and prepares to 
proceed to business. 

We have some bustle in distributing our stove 
and tea-kettle and lunch-baskets to the different 
boats, as we are to row far up stream, and, when 
we have caught our dinner, land, and cook it, I 
sit in the bow, and, being good for nothing in 
the fishing-line, make myself of service by 
holding the French cofiee-pot in my lap. The 
tea-kettle being at my feet on one side, the stove 
on the other, and the luncheon-basket in full 



PICNICKING UP JULINGTON 73 

view in front, I consider myself as, in a sense, 
at housekeeping. Meanwhile the fishing-reels 
are produced, the lines thrown ; and the profes- 
sional fishermen and fisherwomen become all 
absorbed in their business. We row slowly 
along the bobbing, undulating field of broad 
green bonnet-leaves, and I deliver myself to 
speculations on Nature. The roots of these 
water-lilies, of the size of a man's arm, often lie 
floating for yards on the surface, and, with their 
scaly joints, look like black serpents. The 
ribbed and shining leaves, as they float out upon 
the water, are very graceful. One is struck 
with a general similarity in the plant and 
animal growths in these regions : the element 
of grotesqueness seems largely to enter into it. 
Roots of plants become scaly, contorted, and lie 
in convolutions like the coils of a serpent. 
Such are the palmetto-shrubs, whose roots lie in 
scaly folds along the ground, catching into the 



74 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

earth by strong rootlets, and then rising up here 
and there into tall, waving green fans, whose 
graceful beauty in the depths of these forests 
one is never tired of admiring. Amid this 
serpent-like and convoluted jungle of scaly 
roots, how natural to find the scaly alligator, 
looking Hke an animated form of the grotesque 
vegetable world around ! Sluggish, unwieldy, he 
seems a half-developed animal, coming up from 
a plant, — perhaps a link from plant to animal. 
In memory, perhaps, of a previous woodland 
life, he fills his stomach with pine-knots, and bits 
of board, wherever he can find one to chew. It 
is his way of taking tobacco. I have been with 
a hunter who dissected one of these creatures, 
and seen him take from his stomach a mass of 
mingled pine-knots, with bits of brick, worn 
smooth, as if the digestive fluids had somewhat 
corroded them. The fore leg and paw of the 
alligator has a pitiful and rather shocking resem- 



PICNICKING UP JULINGTON. 75 

blance to a black human hand ; and the muscular 
power is so great, that in case of the particular 
alligator I speak of, even after his head was 
taken off, when the incision was made into the 
pectoral muscle for the purpose of skinning, 
this black hand and arm rose up, and gave the 
operator quite a formidable push in the chest. 

We hope to see some of these creatures out ; 
but none appear. The infrequency of their ap- 
pearance marks the lateness and backwardness 
of our spring. There ! — a cry of victory is 
heard from the forward boat ; and Mademoiselle 
Nelly is seen energetically working her elbows : 
a scuffle ensues, and the captive has a free berth 
on a boat, without charge for passage-ticket. 
We shout like people who are getting hungry, 
as in truth we are. And now Elsie starts in 
our boat ; and all is commotion, till a fine blue 
bream, spotted with black, is landed. Next a 
large black trout, with his wide yellow mouth, 



76 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

comes up unwillingly from the crystal flood. We 
pity them ; but what are we to do ? It is a 
question between dinner and dinner. These fish, 
out marketing on their own account, darted at 
our hook, expecting to catch another fish. We 
catch them ; and, instead of eating, they are 
eaten. 

After all, the instinct of hunting and catching 
something is as strong in the human breast as in 
that of cat or tiger ; and we all share the exulta- 
tion which sends a shout from boat to boat as a 
new acquisition is added to our prospective 
dinner-store. 

And now right in front of us looms up from 
the depth of a group of pines and magnolias a 
white skeleton of a tree, with gnarled arms, 
bleached by years of wind and sun, swathed 
with long waving folds of gray moss. On the 
very tip-top of this, proudly above all possibility 
of capture, a fish-hawk's nest is built. Full 



PICNICKING UP JULINGTON 77 

eighty feet in the air, and about the size of 
a flour-barrel ; built like an old marauding 
baron's stronghold in the middle ages, in inac- 
cessible fastnesses ; lined within and swathed 
without with gray moss, — it is a splendid post of 
observation. We can see the white head and 
shoulders of the bird perched upon her nest ; 
and already they perceive us. The pair rise 
and clap their wings, and discourse to each 
other with loud, shrill cries, perhaps of indigna 
tion, that we who have houses to dwell in, and 
beef and chickens to eat, should come up and 
invade their fishing-grounds. 

The fish-hawk — I beg his pardon, the fish- 
eagle ; for I can see that he is a bird of no mean 
size and proportions — has as good a right to 
think that the river and the fish were made for 
him as we ; and better too, because the Creator 
has endowed him with wonderful eyesight, which 
enables him, from the top of a tree eighty feet 



78 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

high, to search the depths of the river, mark his 
prey, and dive down with unerring certainty to 
it. He has his charter in his eyes, his beak, 
his claws ; and doubtless he has a right to re- 
monstrate, when we, who have neither eyes, 
beaks, nor claws adapted to the purpose, manage 
to smuggle away his dinner. Thankful are we 
that no mighty hunter is aboard, and that the 
atrocity of shooting a bird on her nest will not 
be perpetrated here. We are a harmless com- 
pany, and mean so well by them, that they 
really might allow us one dinner out of their 
larder. 

We have rowed as far up Julington as is ex- 
pedient, considering that we have to row down 
again ; and so we land in the immediate vicinity 
of our fish-eagle's fortress, greatly to his discon- 
tent. Wild, piercing cries come to us now and 
then from the heights of the eyry ; but we, un- 
moved, proceed with our dinner-preparations. 



PICNICKING UP JULINGTON. 79 

Do you want to know the best way in the 
world of cooking fish ? Then listen. 

The fish are taken to the river by one, and 
simply washed of their superfluous internals, 
though by no means scaled. A moment pre- 
pares them for the fire. Meanwhile a broad 
hole has been dug in the smooth white sand ; 
and a fire of dry light wood is merrily crackling 
therein. The kerosene-stove is set a-going ; the 
tea-kettle filled, and put on to boil ; when we dis- 
perse to examine the palmetto-jungles. One 
or two parties take to the boats, and skim a'little 
distance up stream, where was a grove of youth- 
ful palmetto-trees. The palmetto-shrub is es- 
sentially a different variety from the tree. In 
moist, rich land, the shrub rears a high head, and 
looks as if it were trying to become a tree ; but 
it never does it. The leaf, also, is essentially 
different. The full-grown palm-leaf is three or 
four yards long, curiously plaited and folded 



8o PALME TTO-LEA VES. 

In the centre of both palmetto and palm is the 
bud from whence all future leaves spring, rising 
like a green spike. This bud is in great 
request for palmetto-hats ; and all manner of 
palm-work ; and it was for these buds that our 
boating-party was going. A venturesome boy, 
by climbing a neighboring tree and jumping 
into the palm, can succeed in securing this 
prize, though at some risk of life and limb. 
Our party returned with two palm-buds about 
two yards long, and one or two of the long, 
graceful leaves. 

But now the fire has burned low, and the 
sand-hole is thoroughly heated. ** Bring me," 
says the presiding cook, " any quantity of those 
great broad bonnet-leaves." And forth impetu- 
ous rush the youth ; and bonnet-leaves cool and 
dripping are forthcoming, wherewith we double- 
line the hole in the sand. Then heads and 
points, compactly folded, go in a line of fish, 



PICNICKING UP JULINGTON. 8 1 

and are covered down green and comfortable 
with a double blanket of dripping bonnet-leaves. 
Then, with a flat board for our shovel, we rake 
back first the hot sand, and then the coals and 
brands yet remaining of the fire. Watches are 
looked at ; and it is agreed by old hands experi- 
enced in clam-bakes that half an hour shall be 
given to complete our dinner. 

Meanwhile the steaming tea-kettle calls for 
cofiee, and the French coffee-pot receives its 
ft-agrant store ; while the fish-hawk, from his high 
tower of observation, interjects plaintive notes 
of remonstrance. I fancy him some hoarse old 
moralist, gifted with uncomfortable keen-sighted- 
ness, forever shrieking down protests on the 
ways of the thoughtless children of men. 

What are we doing to those good fish of his, 
which he could prepare for the table in much 
shorter order } An old hunter who has some- 
times explored the ground under the fish-hawk's 



82 PALME TTO-LEA VES. 

nest says that bushels of fish-bones may be 
found there, neatly picked, testifying to the 
excellent appetite which prevails in those cloud- 
regions, and to the efficiency of the plan of eat- 
ing fish au naturel. 

We wander abroad, and find great blue and 
white violets and swamp-azaleas along the river's 
brink ; and we take advantage of the not very 
dense shade of a long-leaved pine to set out the 
contents of our luncheon-baskets. Ham-sand- 
wiches, hard-boiled eggs, cakes in tempting 
variety, jellies and fruits, make their appearance 
in a miscellaneous sort of way. And now 
comes the great operation of getting out our 
fish. Without shovel, other than a bit of in- 
flammable pine-board, the thing presents evi- 
dent difficulties : but it must be done ; and 
done it is. 

A platter is improvised of two large palmetto- 
leaves. The fire is raked off, and the fish emerge 



PICNICKING UP JULINGTON 83 

from their baking-place, somewhat the worse as 
to external appearance ; but we bear them off to 
I he feast. In the trial process we find that the 
whole external part of the fish — scales, skin, and 
fins — comes off, leaving the meat white and 
pure, and deliciously juicy. A bit well salted and 
peppered is forthwith transferred to each plate ; 
and all agree that never fish was better and 
sweeter. Then coffee is served round ; and we 
feast, and are merry. When the meal is over, we 
arrange our table for the benefit of the fish- 
hawks. The fragments of fish yet remaining, 
bits of bread and cake and cheese, are all sys- 
tematically arranged for him to take his luncheon 
after we are gone. Mr. Bergh himself could not 
ask more exemplary conduct. 

For now the westering sun warns us that it is 
time to be spreading our sails homeward ; and, 
well pleased all, we disperse ourselves into our 
respective boats, to fish again as we pass the 



84 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

lily-pads on the shore. The sport engages every 
one on board except myself, who, sitting in 
the end of the boat, have leisure to observe the 
wonderful beauty of the sky, the shadows of the 
forests-belts in the water, and the glorious trees. 

One magnolia I saw that deserved to be 
called an archangel among the sons of the for- 
est. Full a hundred feet high it stood, with a 
trunk rising straight, round, and branchless for 
full fifty feet, and crowned with a glorious head 
of rich, dark, shining leaves. When its lily- 
blossoms awake, what a glory will it become, 
all alone out there in the silent forest, with only 
God to see ! 

No : let us believe, with Milton, that 

" Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth 
Unseen, both when we wake andwhen we sleep ;" 

and the great magnolia-trees may spring and 
flower for them. 



PICNICKING UP JULINGFON. 85 

The fishing luck still continues ; and the pros- 
pects for a breakfast to-morrow morning are 
bright. One great fellow, however, makes off 
with hook, spoon, and all ; and we see him floun- 
dering among the lily-pads with it in his mouth, 
vastly dissatisfied with his acquisition. Like 
many a poor fellow in the world's fishing, he has 
snapped at a fine bait, and got a sharp hook for 
his pains. 

Now we come back to the yachts, and the 
fishing is over. The sun is just going down as 
we raise our white sails and away for the broad 
shining expanse of the St. John's. In a moment 
the singers of our party break forth into song 
and glee ; and catches roll over the water from 
one yacht to the other as we race along neck 
and neck. 

The evening wind rises fresh and fair, and we 
sweep down the beautiful coast. Great bars of 
opal and rose-color lie across the western sky : 



S6 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

the blue waves turn rosy, and ripple and sparkle 
with the evening light, as we fly along. On the 
distant wharf we see all the stay-at-homes 
watching for us as we come to land after the 
most successful picnic that heart could conceive. 
Each fisherwomari has her fish to exhibit, and 
her exploits to recount ; and there is a plentiful 
fish-breakfast in each of the houses. 

So goes the 29th of February on the St. 
John's. 





MAGNOLIA. 

Mandarin, Fla., March 6, 1872. 
[AGNOLIA is a name suggestive of 
beauty ; and, for once, the name does 
not belie the fact. The boarding- 
house there is about the pleasantest winter 
resort in Florida. We have been passing a day 
and night there as guest of some friends, and 
find a company of about seventy people enjoy- 
ing themselves after the usual fashions of sum- 
mer watering-places. The house is situated on a 

87 



88 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

little eminence, and commands a fine sweep of 
view both up and down the river. In the usual 
fashion of Southern life, it is surrounded with 
wide verandas, where the guests pass most of 
their time, — the ladies chatting, and working 
embroidery ; the gentlemen reading newspapers, 
and smoking. 

The amusements are boating and fishing 
parties of longer or shorter duration, rides and 
walks along the shore, or croquet on a fine, 
shady croquet-ground in a live-oak grove back 
of the house. 

We tried them all. First we went in a row- 
boat about a couple of miles up a little creek. 
The shore on either side was ruffled with the 
green bonnet-leaves, with here and there a 
golden blossom. The forest-trees, which were 
large and lofty, were almost entirely of the 
deciduous kind, which was just bursting into 
leaf; and the effect was very curious and 



MAGNOLIA. 89 

peculiar. One has often remarked what a misty 
effect the first buddings of foUage have. Here 
there was a mist of many colors, — rose-colored, 
pink, crimson, yellow, and vivid green, the hues 
of the young leaves, or of the different tags and 
keys of the different species of trees. Here and 
there a wild plum, sheeted in brilliant white, 
varied the tableau. We rowed up to shore, drew 
down a branch, and filled the laps of the ladies 
with sprays of white flowers. The sun beat 
down upon us with the power of August ; and, 
had it not been for the fresh breeze tha#blew up 
from the creek, we should have found it very 
oppressive. We returned just in time to rest for 
dinner. The dining-hall is spacious and cheer- 
ful ; and the company are seated at small tables, 
forming social groups and parties. The fare was 
about the same as would be found in a first-class 
boarding-house at the North. The house is 
furnished throughout in a very agreeable style ; 



90 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

and an invalid could nowhere in Florida have 
more comforts. It is more than full, and con- 
stantly obliged to turn away applicants ; and we 
understand that families are now waiting at 
Green Cove for places to be vacated here. We 
are told that it is in contemplation, another 
season, to put up several cottages, to be rented 
to families who will board at the hotel. At 
present there is connected with the establish- 
ment one house and a cottage, where some of 
the guests have their rooms ; and, as the weather 
is so generally mild, even invalids find no objec- 
tion to walking to their meals. 

The house is a respectable, good-sized, old- 
fashioned structure ; and, being away from the 
main building, is preferred by some who feel the 
need of more entire quiet. Sitting on the front 
steps in the warm afternoon sunshine, and look- 
ing across to the distant, hazy shores, miles 
away, one could fancy one's self in Italy, — an 



MAGNOLIA. 91 

illusion which the great clumps of aloes, and the 
tall green yuccas, and the gold-fruited orange- 
trees, help to carry out. Groups of ladies were 
seated here and there under trees, reading, 
working, and chatting. We were called off by 
the making-up of a croquet-party. 

The croquet-ground is under the shade of a 
fine grove of live-oaks, which, with their sway- 
ing drapery of white moss, form a graceful shade 
and shelter. We shared the honor of gaining a 
victory or two under the banner of a doctor of 
divinity, accustomed, we believe, to winning 
laurels on quite other fields in the good city of 
New York. It has been our general experience, 
however, that a man good for any thing else is 
commonly a good croquet-player. We would 
notify your editor-in-chief, that, if ever he plays 

a game against Dr. C , he will find a foeman 

worthy of his steel. 

In the evening the whole cornpany gathered 



92 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

in the parlors, made cheerful by blazing wood- 
fires. There were song-singing and piano-play- 
ing, charades and games, to pass the time 
withal ; and all bore testimony to the very 
sociable and agreeable manner in which life 
moved on in their circle. 

Magnolia is about three-quarters of a mile 
from Green-Cove Springs, where are two or 
three large, well-kept boarding-houses. There 
is a very pleasant, shady walk through the 
woods from one place to the other ; and the mail 
comes every day to Green Cove, and is sent for, 
from the Magnolia House, in a daily morning 
carriage. It is one of the amusements of the 
guests to ride over, on these occasions, for a 
little morning gossip and shopping, as Magnolia, 
being quite sequestered, does not present the 
opportunity to chaffer even for a stick of candy. 
Of course, fair ones that have been accustomed 
to the periodicar excitement of a shopping-tour 



MAGNOLIA. 93 

would sink into atrophy without an opportunity 
to spend something. What they can buy at 
Green Cove is a matter of indifference. It is 
the burning of money in idle purses that injures 
the nervous system. 

There are no orange-groves on this side of 
the river. The orange-trees about the house are 
entirely of the wild kind ; and, for merely orna- 
mental purposes, no tree more beautiful could be 
devised. Its vivid green, the deep gold-color of 
its clusters of fruit, and the exuberance with 
which it blossoms, all go to recommend it. 
Formerly there were extensive orange-groves, 
with thousands of bearing trees, on this side of 
the river. The frost of 1835 killed the trees, 
and they have never been reset. Oranges are 
not, therefore, either cheap or plenty at Mag- 
nolia or Green Cove. Nothing shows more 
strikingly the want of enterprise that has char- 
acterized this country than this. Seedling 



94 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

oranges planted the very next day after the great 
frost would have been in bearing ten years after, 
and would, ere now, have yielded barrels and 
barrels of fruit ; and the trees would have grown 
and taken care of themselves. One would have 
thought so very simple and easy a measure 
would have been adopted. 

At eleven o'clock the next morning we took 
steamer for Mandarin, and went skimming along 
the shores, watching the white-blossoming plum- 
trees amid the green of the forest. We stopped 
at Hibernia, a pleasant boarding-house on an 
island called Fleming's, after a rich Col. Flem- 
ing who formerly had a handsome plantation 
there. There is a fine, attractive-looking coun- 
try-house, embowered in trees and with shaded 
verandas, where about forty boarders are yearly 
accommodated. We have heard this resort very 
highly praised as a quiet spot, where the accom- 
modations are homelike and comfortable. It is 



MAGNOLIA. 95 

kept by the widow of the former proprietor ; and 
we are told that guests who once go there 
return year after year. There is something cer- 
tainly very peaceful and attractive about its sur- 
roundings. 

But now our boat is once more drawing up to 
the wharf at Mandarin ; and we must defer much 
that we have to say till next week. Phoebus, we 
are happy to say to our girl correspondents, is 
bright and happy, and in excellent voice. All 
day long, at intervals, we can hear him from the 
back veranda, shouting, " What cheer ! what 
cheer ! " or sometimes abbreviating it as: • 
*' Cheer, cheer, cheer ! " 

Since we have been writing, one of those 
characteristic changes have come up to which 
this latitude is subject. The sun was shining, 
the river blue, the windows open, and the family 
reading, writing, and working on the veranda, 
when suddenly comes a frown of Nature, — a 



96 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

black scowl in the horizon. Up flies the wind ; 
the waves are all white-caps ; the blinds bang; 
the windows rattle ; every one runs to shut every 
thing ; and for a few moments it blows as if it 
would take house and all away. Down drop 
oranges in a golden shower ; here, there, and 
everywhere the lightning flashes ; thunder 
cracks and rattles and rolls ; and the big torrents 
of rain come pouring down : but, in the back- 
porch, Phoebus between each clap persists in 
shouting, " What cheer ! what cheer ! " Like a 
woman in a passion. Nature ends all this with a 
burst of tears ; and it is raining now, tenderly 
and plaintively as if bemoaning itself 

Well, we wouldn't have missed the sight if we 
had been asked ; and we have picked up a 
bushel of oranges that otherwise somebody must 
have climbed the trees for. 

Meanwhile the mail is closing. Good-by ! 




YELLOW JESSAMINES. 




Mandarin, Fla., March 14, 1872. 
HEY talk about Florida being the 
land of flowers : I'm sure / don't 
see where the flowers are." 
The speaker was a trim young lady, with 
pretty, high-heeled boots, attired in all those 
charming mysteries behind and before, and up 
and down, that make the daughter of Eve look 
hke some bright, strange, tropical bird. She 
had come to see Florida ; that is, to take board 
7 97 



98 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

at the St. James. She had provided herself 
with half a dozen different palmetto-hats, an 
orange-wood cane tipped with an alligator's 
tooth, together with an assortment of cranes' 
wings and pink curlews' feathers, and talked of 
Florida with the assured air of a connoisseur. 
She had been on the boat up to Enterprise ; she 
had crossed at Tekoi over to St. Augustine, and 
come back to the St. James ; and was now pre- 
pared to speak as one having authority : and she 
was sure she did not see why it was called a 
land of flowers. She hadn't seen any. 

" But, my dear creature, have you ever been 
where they grow.? Have you walked in the 
woods .? " 

" Walked in the woods ? Gracious me ! Of 
course not ! Who could walk in sand half up to 
one's ankles } I tried once ; and the sand got 
into my boots, and soiled my stockings : besides, 
I'm afraid of snakes." 



YELLOW JESSAMINES, 99 

" Then, my dear, you will never be a judge on 
the question whether Florida is or is not a land 
of flowers. Whoever would judge on that ques- 
tion must make up her mind to good long 
tramps in the woods ; must wear stout boots, 
with India-rubbers, or, better still, high India- 
rubber boots. So equipped, and with eyes open 
to see what is to be seen, you will be prepared 
to explore those wild glades and mysterious 
shadows where Nature's beauties, marvels, and 
mysteries are wrought. The Venus of these 
woods is only unveiled in their deepest soli- 
tudes." 

For ourselves, we claim to have experience in 
this matter of flowers ; having always observed 
them in all lands. We were impressed more by 
the flowers of Italy than by any thing else 
-here; yes, more than by the picture-galleries, 
the statues, the old ruins. The sight of the 
green lawns of the Pamfili Doria, all bubbhng 

Lore. 



lOO PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

up in little rainbow-tinted anemones ; the cool 
dells where we picked great blue-and-white 
violets ; the damp, mossy shadows in the Quiri- 
nal gardens, where cyclamen grow in crimson 
clouds amid a crush of precious old marbles and 
antiques ; the lovely flowers, unnamed of botany, 
but which we should call a sort of glorified blue- 
and-white daisies, that we gathered in the shad- 
owy dells near Castle Gandolpho, — these have 
a freshness in our memory that will last when 
the memory of all the '' stun images " of the 
Vatican has passed away. 

In our mind's eye we have compared Florida 
with Italy often, and asked if it can equal it. 
The flowers here are not the same, it is true. 
The blue violets are not fragrant. We do not 
find the many-colored anemones, nor the cycla- 
men. Both can be planted out here, and will 
grow readily ; but they are not wild flowers, 
not indigenous. 



YELLOW JESSAMINES. lOI 

"Well, then, are there others to compen- 
sate ? " We should say so. 

The yellow jessamine itself, in its wild grace, 
with its violet-scented breath, its profuse abun- 
dance, is more than a substitute for the anem- 
ones of Italy. 

If you will venture to walk a little way in the 
sand beyond our back-gate, we will show you a 
flower-show this morning such as Chiswick or 
the Crystal Palace cannot equal. 

About a quarter of a mile we walk : and then 
we turn in to what is called here an oak-ham- 
mock ; which is, being interpreted, a grove of 
live-oak-trees, with an underbrush of cedar, 
holly, and various flowering-shrubs. An effort 
has been made to clear up this hammock. The 
larger trees have some of them been cut down, 
but not removed. The work of clearing was 
abandoned ; and, the place being left to Nature, 
she proceeded to improve and beautify it after a 



102 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

fashion of her own. The yellow jessamine, 
which before grew under the shadow of the 
trees, now, exultant in the sunshine which was 
let in upon it, has made a triumphant and 
abounding growth, such as we never saw any- 
where else. It is the very Ariel of flowers, — 
the tricksy sprite, full of life and grace and 
sweetness ; and it seems to take a capricious 
pleasure in rambling everywhere, and masquer- 
ading in the foliage of every kind of tree. Now 
its yellow bells twinkle down like stars from the 
prickly foliage of the holly, where it has 
taken full possession, turning the solemn old 
evergreen into a blossoming garland. Now, 
sure enough, looking up full sixty feet into yon- 
der water-oak, we see it peeping down at us in 
long festoons, mingling with the swaying, crapy 
streamers of the gray moss. Yonder a little 
live-oak-tree has been so completely possessed 
and beflowered, that it shows a head of blossoms 



YELLOW JESSAMINES. IO3 

as round as an apple-tree in May. You look 
below, and jessamine is trailing all over the 
ground, weaving and matting, with its golden 
buds and open bells peeping up at you from the 
huckleberry-bushes and sedge-grass. 

Here is a tree overthrown, and raising its 
gaunt, knotted branches in air, veiled with soft 
mossy drapery. The jessamine springs upon it 
for a trellis : it weaves over and under and 
around ; it throws off long sprays and streamers 
with two golden buds at the axil of every green 
leaf, and fluttering out against the blue of the 
sky. Its multiform sprays twist and knot and 
tie themselves in wonderful intricacies ; and still 
where every green leaf starts is a yellow flower- 
bud. The beauty of these buds is peculiar. 
They have little sculptured grooves ; and the 
whole looks as if it might have been carved of 
fairy chrysolite for a lady's ear-drop. Our little 
brown chambermaid wears them dangling in her 



1 04 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

ears ; and a very pretty picture she makes with 
them. Coal-black Frank looks admiringly after 
her as she trips by with them shaking and 
twinkling to his confusion, as he forgets for a 
moment to saw wood, and looks longingly after 
her. No use, Frank. " Trust her not : she is 
fooling thee." Her smiles are all for lighter-col- 
ored beaux. But still she wears yellow jessa- 
mine in her crapy hair, and orders Frank to 
bring her wreaths and sprays of it whenever she 
wants it ; and Frank obeys. That's female 
sovereignty, the world over ! 

In this same hammock are certain tall, grace- 
ful shrubs, belonging, as we fancy, to the 
high-huckleberry tribe, but which the Floridi- 
ans call sparkleberry. It is the most beautiful 
white ornamental shrub we have ever seen. 
Imagine £ shrub with vivid green foliage, hang- 
ing profusely with wreaths of lilies-of-the-valley, 
and you have as near as possible an idea of the 



YELLOW JESSAMINES. Io5 

sparkleberry. It is only in bud now, being a 
little later than the jessamine, and coming into 
its glory tvhen the jessamine is passing away. 

The regular employment now of every after- 
noon is to go out in the mule-cart with old Fly 
into the woods, flower-hunting. 

It is as lovely an afternoon-work as heart 
could wish ; the sky is so blue, the air so 
balmy, and at every step there is something new 
to admire. The coming-out of the first leaves 
and tags and blossom-keys of the deciduous 
trees has a vividness and brilliancy peculiar to 
these regions. The oak-hammock we have been 
describing as the haunt of yellow jessamine is 
as picturesque and beautiful a tree-study as an 
artist could desire. There are tall, dark cedars, 
in which the gray films of the long moss have a 
peculiarly light and airy appearance. There is 
the majestic dome of the long-leaved Southern 
pine, rising high over all the other trees, as in 



1 06 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

Italy the stone-pine. Its leaves are from twelve 
to eighteen inches long ; and the swaying of 
such pines makes a susurrus worth listening 
to. The water-oak is throwing out its bright 
young leaves of a gold-tinted green ; and the 
live-oak, whose leaves are falling now, is burst- 
ing into little velvety tags, premonitory of new 
foliage. Four species of oaks we notice. The 
live-oak, the water-oak, and a species of scrub- 
tree which they call the olive-leaved oak, are 
all evergreens, and have narrow, smooth leaves. 
Then there are what are familiarly called black- 
jacks, — a deciduous oak, which bears a large, 
sharply-cut, indented leaf, of a character resem- 
bling our Northern ones. Besides these, the 
prickly-ash, with its curiously knobbed and 
pointed branches, and its graceful, feathery 
leaves, forn;is a feature in the scene. Under- 
neath, great clumps of prickly-pear are throwing 
out their queer buds, to be, in turn, followed by 
bright yellow blossoms. 



YELLOW JESSAMINES. 107 

To an uninstructed eye, the pine-woods in 
which we ride look like a flat, monotonous 
scene. The pines rise seventy, eighty, and a 
hundred feet in the air, so that their tops are far 
above, and cast no shade. This is a considera- 
tion of value, however, for a winter's ride ; for 
one enjoys the calm sunshine. Even in days 
when high winds are prevailing along the river- 
front, the depth of these pine-woods is calm, 
sunny, and still ; and one can always have a 
pleasant walk there. When the hotter months 
come on, the live-oaks and water-oaks have 
thick, new foliage, and the black-jacks and hick- 
ory and sweet-gum trees throw out their shade 
to shelter the traveller. Every mile or two, our 
path xS traversed by a brook on its way to the 
St. John's. The natives here call a brook a 
" branch ; " and a branch is no small circum- 
stance, since all the finest trees and shrubbery 
grow upon its banks. You can look through 



I08 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

the high, open pillars of the pine-trees, and 
watch the course of a branch half a mile from 
you by the gorgeous vegetation of the trees 
which line its shores. 

We jog along in our mule-cart, admiring every 
thing as we go. We are constantly exclaiming 
at something, and tempted to get out to gather 
flowers. Here and there through the long 
wire-grass come perfect gushes of blue and 
white violets. The blue violets are large, and, 
of necessity, are obliged to put forth very long 
stems to get above the coarse, matted grass. 
The white are very fragrant, and perfectly 
whiten the ground in some moist places. 
There is a large, fragrant kind, very scarce and 
rare, but of which we have secured several 
roots. We are going this afternoon to the 
"second branch" after azaleas. We stop at a 
little distance, when its wall of glossy verdure 
rises up before us. There is no accomplishment 



YELLOW JESSAMINES. 109 

of a mule in which Fly is better versed than 
stopping and standing still. We fancy that we 
hear him, in his inner consciousness, making a 
merit of it, as we all do of our pet virtues. He 
is none of your frisky fellows, always wanting to 
be going, and endangering everybody that wants 
to get in or out with prances and curvets, — not 
he ! He is a beast that may be trusted to stand 
for any length of time without an attempt at 
motion. Catch him running away ! So we 
leave Fly, and determine to explore the branch. 

The short palmettoes here are grown to the 
height of fifteen feet. Their roots look like 
great scaly serpents, which, after knotting and 
convoluting a while, suddenly raise their crests 
high in air, and burst forth into a graceful crest 
of waving green fans. These waving clumps of 
fan-like leaves are the first and peculiar feature 
of the foliage. Along the shore here, clumps 
of pale pink azaleas grow high up, and fill the 



I lO PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

air with sweetness. It is for azaleas we are 
come ; and so we tread our way cautiously, — 
cautiously, because we have heard tales of the 
moccasin-snake — fearful gnome ! — said to infest 
damp places, and banks of rivers. In all our 
Floridian rambles, we never yet have got sight 
of this creature ; though we have explored all 
the moist places, and sedgy, swampy dells, 
where azaleas and blue iris and white lilies 
grow. But the tradition that such things are 
inspires a wholesome care never to set a foot 
down without looking exactly where it goes. 
" The branch," we find, is lighted up in many 
places by the white, showy blossoms of the dog- 
wood, of which, also, we gather great store. We 
pile in flowers — azalea and dogwood — till our 
wagon is full, and then proceed with a trowel to 
take up many nameless beauties. 

There is one which grows on a high, slender 
stalk, resembling in its form a primrose, that has 



YELLOW JESSAMINES. Ill 

the purest and intensest yellow that we ever 
saw in a flower. There is a purple variety of 
the same species, that grows in the same neigh- 
borhoods. We have made a bed of these wood- 
land beauties at the roots of our great oak, so 
that they may finish their growth, and seed, if 
possible, under our own eye. 

By the by, we take this occasion to tell the 
lady who writes to beg of us to send her some 
seeds or roots of Florida plants or flowers, that 
we have put her letter on file, and perhaps, some 
day, may find something to send her. Any one 
who loves flowers touches a kindred spot in our 
heart. The difficulty with all these flowers and 
roots sent North is, that they need the heat of 
this climate to bring them to perfection. Still 
there is no saying what a real plant-lover may 
do in coaxing along exotics. The " run " we 
have been exploring has, we are told, in the sea- 
son of them, beautiful blue wisteria climbing 



1 1 2 PALME TTO-LEA VES. 

from branch to branch. It does not come till 
after the yellow jessamine is gone. The coral- 
honeysuckle and a species of trumpet-creeper 
also grow here, and, in a little time, will be in 
full flower. One of our party called us into the 
run, and bade us admire a beautiful shrub, some 
fifteen feet high, whose curious, sharply-cut, 
deep-green leaves were shining with that glossy 
polish which gives such brilliance. Its leaves 
were of waxen thickness, its habit of growth 
peculiarly graceful ; and our colored handmaid- 
en, who knows the habits of every plant in our 
vicinity, tells us that it bears a white, sweet 
blossom^ some weeks later. We mentally resolve 
to appropriate this fair Daphne of the woods on 
the first opportunity when hands can be spared 
to take it up and transport it. 

But now the sun falls west, and we plod 
homeward. If you want to see a new and 
peculiar beauty, watch a golden sunset through 



YELLOW JESSAMINES. II3 

a grove draperied with gray moss. The sway- 
ing, filmy bands turn golden and rose-colored ; 
and the long, swaying avenues are like a scene 
in fairyland. We come home, and disembark 
our treasures. Our house looks like a perfect 
flower-show. Every available vase and jar is 
full, — dogwood, azaleas, blue iris, wreaths of 
yellow jessamine, blue and white violets, and 
the golden unknown, which we christen prim- 
roses. The daily sorting of the vases is no 
small charge : but there is a hand to that depart- 
ment which never neglects ; and so we breathe 
their air and refresh our eyes with their beauty 
daily. 

Your cold Northern snow-storms hold back 
our spring. The orange-buds appear, but hang 
back. They are three weeks later than usual. 
Our letters tell us frightful stories of thermome- 
ters no end of the way below zero. When you 
have a snow-storm, we have a cold rain : so you 

8 



114 PALMETTO-LEAVES. 

must keep bright lookout on your ways up 
tliere, or we shall get no orange-blossoms. 

We have received several letters containing 
questions about Florida. It is our intention to 
devote our next paper to answering these. We 
are perfectly ready to answer any number of 
inquiries, so long as we can lump them alj 
together, and answer them through " The Chris- 
tian Union." 

One class of letters, however, we cannot too 
thankfully remember. Those who have read our 
papers with so much of sympathy as to send in 
contributions to our church here have done us 
great good. We have now a sum contributed 
with which we hope soon to replace our loss. 
And now, as the mail is closing, we must close. 

P. S. — We wish you could see a gigantic bou- 
quet that Mr. S has just brought in from 

the hummock. A little shrub-oak, about five 



YELLOW JESSAMINES. 1 1 5 

feet high, whose spreading top is all a golden 
mass of bloom with yellow jessamine, he has cut 
down, and borne home in triumph. 

What an adornment would this be for one of 
the gigantic Japanese vases that figure in New- 
York drawing-rooms ! What would such a bou- 
quet sell for ? 











"FLORIDA FOR INVALIDS/* 

E find an aggrieved feeling in the 
minds of the Floridian public in 
view of a letter in " The Independ- 
ent," by Dr. , headed as above ; and we have 

l)een urgently requested to say something on the 
other view of the question. 

Little did we suppose when we met our good 
friend at Magnolia, apparently in the height of 
spirits, the life of the establishment, and head 
promoter of all sorts of hilarity, that, under all 

ii6 



''FLORIDA FOR INVALIDS:' II7 

this delightful cheerfulness, he was contending 
with such dreary experiences as his article in 
" The Independent " would lead one to suppose. 
Really, any one who should know the doctor 
only from that article might mistake him for a 
wretched hypochondriac ; whereas we saw him, 
and heard of him by universal repute at Magno- 
lia, as one of the cheeriest and sunniest of the 
inmates, taking every thing by the smoothest 
handle, and not only looking on the bpght side 
himself, but making everybody else do the same. 
Imagine, therefore, our utter astonishment at 
finding our buoyant doctor summing up his 
Florida experience in such paragraphs as 
these : — 

" From what I have observed, I should think 
Florida was nine-tenths water, and the other 
tenth swamp. Many are deceived by the milder 
climate here ; and down they come — to die. 
The mildness, too, is exaggerated. Yesterday 



1 1 8 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

morning, the thermometer was at thirty-six 
degrees. Outside, our winter overcoats were 
necessary; and great wood-fires roared within 
Now and then the thermometer reaches eighty 
degrees at mid-day ; but, that very night, you 
may have frost. 

"Another fact of Florida is malaria. How 
could it be otherwise .-* Souse Manhattan Island 
two feet deep in fresh water, and wouldn't the 
price of quinine rise t 

" I have no objection to the term ' sunny 
South ;' it is a pretty alliteration : but I object to 
its application to Georgia and Florida in Febru- 
ary. I wish you could have seen me last Friday 
night. We were riding two hundred and sixty 
miles through a swamp, — Okefinokee of the 
geographies. I was clad in full winter suit, 
with heavy Russian overcoat." 

But a careful comparison of the incidents in 
his letter solves the mystery. The letter was 



''FLORIDA FOR INVALIDS:' II9 

written in an early date in the doctor's Floridian 
experience, and before he had had an opportunity 
of experiencing the benefit which he subse- 
quently reaped from it. 

We perceive by the reference to last Friday 
night, and the ride through Okefinokee Swamp, 
that the doctor was then fresh from the North, 
and undergoing that process of disenchant- 
ment which many Northern travellers experi- 
ence, particularly those who come by railroad. 
The most ardent friends of Florida must admit 
that this railroad is by no means a prepos- 
sessing approach to the land of promise ; and 
the midnight cold upon it is something Hkely to 
be had in remembrance. When we crossed it, 
however, we had a stove, which was a small imi- 
tation of Nebuchadnezzar's furnace, to keep us 
in heart. Otherwise there is a great deal of 
truth in our friend's allegations. As we have 
elsewhere remarked, every place, hke a bit of 



1 20 PALMETTO-LEA VES, 

tapestry, has its right side and its wrong side ; 
and both are true and real, — the wrong side 
with its tags and rags, and seams and knots, and 
thrums of worsted, and the right side with its 
pretty picture. 

It is true, as the doctor says, that some in- 
valids do come here, expose themselves impru- 
dently, and die. People do die in Florida, if 
they use the means quite as successfully as in 
New York. It is true that sometimes the ther- 
mometer stands at seventy at noon, and that the 
nights are much cooler; it is true we have 
sometimes severe frosts in Florida ; it is true 
we have malaria; it is true that there are 
swamps in Florida ; and it is quite apt to be true, 
that, if a man rides a hundred miles through a 
swamp at night, he will feel pretty chilly. 

All these are undeniable truths. We never 
pretended that Florida was the kingdom of 
heaven, or the land where they shall no more 



''FLORIDA FOR INVALIDS:' 121 

say, "I am sick." It is quite the reverse. 
People this very winter have in our neighbor- 
hood had severe attacks of pneumonia ; and un- 
doubtedly many have come to Florida seeking 
health, and have not found it. 

Yet, on the other hand, there are now living 
in Florida many old established citizens and 
land-owners who came here ten, twenty, and 
thirty years ago, given over in consumption, 
who have here for years enjoyed a happy and 
vigorous life in spite of Okefinokee Swamp and 
the malaria. 

Undoubtedly the country would be much bet- 
ter to live in if there were no swamps and no 
malaria ; and so, also. New England would be 
better to live in if there were not six months 
winter and three more months of cold weather 
there. As to malaria, it is not necessary to 
souse Manhattan Island under water to get that 
in and around New York. The new lands in 



122 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

New York will give you chills and fever quite as 
well as Florida. You can find malarial fevers 
almost anywhere in the towns between New 
York and New Haven ; and it is notorious that 
many estates in the vicinity of New York and 
Philadelphia sell cheap on that very account, 
because they are almost as malarious as some 
Italian villas. 

Florida is not quite so bad as that yet, 
although it has its share of that malaria which 
attends the development of land in a new coun- 
try. But the malarial fevers here are of a mild 
type, and easily managed ; and they are generally 
confined to the fall months. The situation of 
Florida, surrounded by the sea, and the free 
sweep of winds across it, temper the air, and 
blow away malarious gases. 

In regard to consumptives and all other 
invalids, the influence of a Floridian climate 
depends very much on the nature of the case 
and the constitution of the individual. 



''FLORIDA FOR INVALIDS:' 123 

If persons suffer constitutionally from cold ; if 
they are bright and well only in hot weather ; if 
the winter chills and benumbs them., till, in the 
spring, they are. in the condition of a frost-bitten 
hot-house plant, — alive, to be sure, but with 
every leaf gone, — then these persons may be 
quite sure that they will be the better for a win- 
ter in Florida, and better still if they can take 
up their abode there. 

But if, on the contrary, persons are debilitated 
and wretched during hot weather, and if cool 
weather braces them, and gives them vigor and 
life, then such evidently have no call to Florida, 
and should be booked for Minnesota, or some 
other dry, cold climate. There are consump- 
tives belonging to both these classes of constitu- 
tion ; and the coming of one of the wrong kind 
to Florida is of no use to himself, and is sure to 
bring discredit on the country. A little good 
common sense and reflection will settle that 
matter. 



1 24 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

Again : there is a form of what passes for con- 
sumption, which is, after all, some modification 
of liver-complaint ; and, so far as we have heard 
or observed, Florida is no place for these cases. 
The diseases here are of the bilious type ; and 
those who have liver-complaint are apt to grow 
worse rather than better. But there are classes 
of persons on whom the climate of Florida acts 
like a charm. 

There are certain nervously-organized dyspep- 
tics who require a great deal of open, out-door 
life. They are in comfortable health during 
those months when they can spend half their 
time in the open air. They have no particular 
disease ; but they have no great reserved 
strength, and cannot battle with severe weather. 
They cannot go out in snow or wind, or on 
chilly, stormy days, without risking more harm 
than they get good. Such, in our" Northern 
climate, are kept close prisoners for six months. 



''FLORIDA FOR INVALIDS:' 125 

From December to May, they are shut in to 
furnace-heated houses or air-tight stoves. The 
winter is one long struggle to keep themselves 
up. For want of the out-door exercise which 
sustains them in summer, appetite and sleep 
both fail them. They have restless nights and 
bad digestion, and look anxiously to the end of 
winter as the only relief For such how slowly 
it drags ! They watch the almanac. The sun 
crosses the line ; the days grow a minute longer : 
spring will come by and by. But by what cruel 
irony was the month of March ever called 
spring } — March, which piles snow-storms and 
wind-storms on backs almost broken by endur- 
ance. The long agony of March and April 
is the breaking-point with many a delicate per- 
son who has borne pretty well the regular 
winter. 

Said one who did much work, " I bear it 
pretty well through December. I don't so much 



126 PALMETTO-LEAVES. 

mind January. February tires me a little ; but I 
face it bravely. But by March I begin to say, 
' Well, if this don't stop pretty soon, / shall : I 
can't get much farther.' " But our heaviest 
snow-storms and most savage cold are often 
reserved for March ; and to many an invalid it 
has given the final thrust : it is the last straw 
that breaks the camel's back. But after March, 
in New England, comes April, utterly untrust- 
worthy, and with no assured out-door life for a 
delicate person. As to the month of May, the 
poet Cowper has a lively poem ridiculing the 
poets who have made the charms of May the sub- 
ject of their songs. Mother Nature is repre- 
sented as thus addressing them : — 

" ' Since you have thus combined,' she said, 
' My favorite nymph to sh'ght, 
Adorning May, that peevish maid. 
With June's undoubted right, 



''FLORIDA FOR INVALIDS:' 12J 

The minx, cursed for your folly's sake, 

Shall prove herself a shrew ; 
Shall make your scribbling fingers ache, 

And bite your noses blue.' " 

Which she generally does. 

So it is not really till June that delicately-con- 
stituted persons, or persons of impaired vigor, 
really feel themselves out of prison. They have 
then about five months at most in which they 
can live an open-air life, before the prison-doors 
close on them again. 

Now, the persons who would be most bene- 
fited by coming to Florida are not the desper- 
ately diseased, the confirmed consumptives, but 
those of such impaired physical vigor that they 
are in danger of becoming so. An ounce of 
prevention here is worth many pounds of cure. 
It is too often the case that the care and expense 
that might have prevented disease from settling 
are spent in vain after it has once fastened. Sad 



1 28 PALME TTO-LEA VES. 

'^ is indeed to see the wan and \vrasted faces, and 
tiear the hollow death-cough, of those who have 
Deen brought here too late. Yet, in hundreds 
of instances, yes, in thousands, where one more 
severe Northern winter would have fastened 
disease on the vitals, a winter in a Southern 
climate has broken the spell. The climate of 
Florida is also of peculiar advantage in all 
diseases attended by nervous excitability. The 
air is peculiarly soothing and tranquillizing : it is 
the veritable lotos-eater's paradise, full of quiet 
and repose. We have known cases where the 
sleeplessness of years has given way, under this 
balmy influence, to the most childlike habit of 
slumber. 

For debility, and the complaints that spring 
from debility, Florida is not so good a refuge, per- 
haps, as some more northern point, like Aiken. 
The air here is soothing, but not particularly 
bracing. It builds up and strengthens, not by 



''FLORIDA FOR INVALIDS?' 1 29 

any tonic effect in itself so much as by the op- 
portunity for constant open-air life and exercise 
which it affords. 

For children, the climate cannot be too much 
praised. In our little neighborhood are seven 
about as lively youngsters as could often be met 
with ; and the winter has been one long out-door 
play-spell. There has not been a cough, nor a 
cold, nor an ailment of any kind, and scarce an 
anxiety. All day long we hear their running 
and racing, — down to the boat-wharves ; in the 
boats, which they manage as dexterously as 
little Sandwich - Islanders ; fishing ; catching 
crabs, or off after flowers in the woods, with no 
trouble of hail, sleet, or wet feet. Truly it is a 
child's Eden ; and they grow and thrive accord- 
ingly. 

Now as to malaria. That is a word requiring 
consideration to those who expect to make 
Florida a permanent home, but having no terrors 



1 30 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

for those who come to spend winters merely 

There is no malaria in winter ; and Dr. C 

may be consoled in reflecting that frost always 
destroys it : so that, when the thermometer is, as 
he says, at thirty-two degrees, there is no danger 
even though one be in the same State with forty 
swamps. In fact, for ourselves, we prefer a cool 
winter such as this has been. An October-like 
winter, when it is warm in the middle of the 
day, and one can enjoy a bright fire on the 
hearth morning and night, is the most favorable 
to out-door exercise and to health. 

But merely to come to Florida, and idle away 
time at the St. James or the St. Augustijie 
Hotel, taking no regular exercise, and having no 
employment for mind or body, is no way to im- 
prove by being here. It is because the climate 
gives opportunity of open-air exercise that it is 
so favorable ; but, if one neglects all these op- 
portunities, he may gain very little. 



''FLORIDA FOR INVALIDS:' 131 

It cannot be too often impressed on strangers 
coming here, that what cold there is will be 
more keenly felt than in a Northern climate. 
Persons should vary their clothing carefully to 
the varying temperature, and be quite as careful 
to go warmly clad as in colder States. In our 
furnace-heated houses at the North we generally 
wear thick woollen dresses and under-flannels, 
and keep up a temperature of from seventy 
to eighty degrees. In the South we move in 
a much lower temperature, and have only the 
open fire upon the hearth. It is therefore im- 
portant to go warmly clad, and particularly to 
keep on flannels until the warm weather of April 
becomes a settled thing. 

In regard to the healthfulness of Florida, 
some things are to be borne in mind. In a 
State that has the reputation of being an inva- 
lid's asylum, many desperate cases necessarily 
take refuge, and, of course, many die. Yet, 



1 32 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

notwithstanding the loss from these causes, the 
census of i860 showed that the number of 
deaths from pulmonary complaints is less to the 
population than in any State of the Union. In 
Massachusetts, the rate is one in two hundred 
and fift3'^-four ; in California, one in seven hun- 
dred and twenty-seven ; in Florida, one in four- 
teen hundred and forty-seven. Surgeon-Gen. 
Lawson of the United-States army, in his re- 
port, asserts that " the ratio of deaths to the 
number of cases of remittent fevers has been 
much less among the troops serving in Florida 
than in other portions of the United States. In 
the middle division, the proportion is one death 
to thirty-six cases of fever ; in the northern, 
one to fifty-two ; in Texas, one to seventy- 
eight ; in California, one in a hundred and 
twenty-two ; while in Florida it is one in two 
hundred and eighty-seven." 

Such statistics as these are more reliable than 



''FLORIDA FOR INVALID^:' 133 

the limited observation of any one individual. 
In regard to sudden changes of climate, Florida 
is certainly not in all parts ideally perfect. 
There are, at times, great and sudden changes 
there, but not by any means as much so as in 
most other States of the Union. 

Sudden changes from heat to cold are the be- 
setting sin of this fallen world. It is the staple 
subject for grumbling among the invalids who 
visit Italy ; and, in fact, it is probably one of the 
consequences of Adam's fall, which we are not 
to be rid of till we get to the land of pure de- 
light. It may, however, comfort the hearts of 
visitors to Florida to know, that, if the climate 
here is not in this respect just what they would 
have it, it is about the best there is going. 

All this will be made quite clear to any one 
who will study the tables of observations on tem- 
perature contained in " The Guide to Florida," 
where they can see an accurate account of the 



1 34 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

range of the thermometer for five successive 
years as compared with that in other States. 

One thing cannot be too often »-eiterated to 
people who come to Florida ; and that is, that 
they must not expect at once to leave behind 
them all sickness, sorrow, pain, inconvenience 
of any kind, and to enter at once on the rest of 
paradise. 

The happiness, after all, will have to be com- 
parative ; and the inconveniences are to be 
borne by reflecting how much greater inconven- 
iences are avoided. For instance, when we 
have a three-days* damp, drizzling rain-storm 
down here, we must reflect, that, at the North, it 
is a driving snow-storm. When it is brisk, cold 
weather here, it is an intolerable freeze there. 
The shadow and reflection of all important 
changes at the North travel down to us in time. 
The exceptionally cold winter at the North has 
put our season here back a month behind its 



''FLORIDA FOR INVALIDS:' 135 

usual spring-time. The storms travel down- 
ward, coming to us, generally, a little later, and 
in a modified form. 

Vr'e cannot better illustrate this than by two 
expei iences this year. Easter morning we were 
waked by bird-singing ; and it was a most 
heavenly morning. We walked out in the calm, 
dewy freshness, to gather flowers to dress our 
house, — the only church we have now in which 
to hold services. In the low swamp-land near 
our home is a perfect field of blue iris, whose 
bending leaves were all beaded with dew ; and 
we walked in among them, admiring the won- 
derful vividness of their coloring, and gathering 
the choicest to fill a large vase. Then we cut 
verbenas, white, scarlet, and crimson, rose-gera- 
niums and myrtle, callas and roses ; while 
already on our tables were vases of yellow jes- 
samine, gathered the night before. The blue St. 
John's lay in misty bands of light and shade in 



1 36 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

the distance ; a^d the mocking-birds and red- 
birds were singing a loud Te Deum. 

Now for the North. A friend in Hartford 
writes, " I was awaked by the patter of snow 
and sleet on the window-pane. Not a creature 
could go out to church, the storm was so 
severe: even the Irish were obliged to keep 
housed. With all we could do with a furnace 
and morning-glory stove, we could not get the 
temperature of our house above fifty-five de- 
grees." 

In the latter part of the day, we at Mandarin 
had some rough, chilling winds, which were the 
remains of the Northern Easter storm ; but we 
were wise enough to rejoice in the good we had, 
instead of fretting at the shadow of evil. 





SWAMPS AND ORANGE-TREES, 

March 25, 1872. 
lg|FTER a cold, damp, rainy week, we 
have suddenly had dropped upon us 
a balmy, warm, summer day, — ther- 
mometer at eighty ; and every thing out of doors 
growing so fast, that you may see and hear it 
grow. 

The swampy belt of land in front of the 
house is now bursting forth in clouds of blue 
iris of every shade, from the palest and faintest 

^37 



138 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

to the most vivid lapis-lazuli tint. The wild- 
rose-bushes there are covered with buds : and 
the cypress-trees are lovely with their vivid lit- 
tle feathers of verdure. This swamp is one of 
those crooks in our lot which occasions a never- 
ceasing conflict of spirit. It is a glorious, bewil- 
dering impropriety. The trees and shrubs in it 
grow as if they were possessed ; and there is 
scarcely a month in the year that it does not 
flame forth in some new blossom. It is a per- 
petual flower-garden, where creepers run and 
tangle ; where Nature has raptures and frenzies 
of growth, and conducts herself like a crazy, 
drunken, but beautiful bacchante. But what to 
do with it is not clear. The river rises and 
falls in it ; and under all that tangle of foliage 
lies a foul sink of the blackest mud. The 
black, unsavory moccasin-snakes are said and 
believed to have their lair in those jungles, 
where foot of man cares not to tread. Gi- 



SIVAMPS AND ORANGE-TREES. 1 39 

gantic bulrushes grow up ; clumps of high 
water-grasses, willows, elms, maples, cypresses, 
Magnolia glauca (sweet-bay), make brave show 
of foliage. Below, the blue pickerel-weed, the 
St. John's lily, the blue iris, wild-roses, blossom- 
ing tufts of elder, together with strange flowers 
of names unspoken, make a goodly fellowship. 
The birds herd there in droves ; red-birds glance 
like gems through the boughs ; cat-birds and 
sparrows and jays babble and jargon there in 
the green labyrinths made by the tangling vines. 
We muse over it, meanwhile enjoying the visible 
coming-on of spring in its foliage. The maples 
have great red leaves, curling with their own 
rapid growth ; the elms feather out into graceful 
plumes ; and the cypress, as we said before, 
most brilliant of all spring greens, puts forth its 
fairy foliage. Verily it is the most gorgeous of 
improprieties, this swamp ; and we will let it 
alone this year also, and see what will come of 



140 PALMETTO-LEAVES. 

it. There are suggestions of ditching and 
draining, and what not, that shall convert the 
wild baccha7tte into a steady, orderly member of 
society. We shall see. 

Spring is a glory anywhere ; but, as you 
approach the tropics, there is a vivid brilliancy, 
a burning tone, to the coloring, that is peculiar. 
We are struck with the beauty of the cat-briers. 
We believe they belong to the smilax family ; 
and the kinds that prevail here are evergreen, 
and have quaintly-marked leaves. Within a day 
or two, these glossy, black-green vines have 
thrown out trembling red sprays shining with 
newness, with long tendrils waving in the air. 
The vigor of a red young shoot that seems to 
spring out in an hour has something delightful 
in it. 

Yellow jessamine, alas ! is fading. The 
ground is strewn with pale-yellow trumpets, as 
if the elves had had a concert and thrown down 



SWAMPS AND ORANGE-TREES. 14I 

their instruments, and fled. Now the vines 
throw out young shoots half a yard long, and 
infinite in number; and jessamine goes on to 
possess and clothe new regions, which next 
February shall be yellow with flowers. 

Farewell for this year, sweet Medea of the 
woods, with thy golden fleece of blossoms ! 
Why couldst thou not stay with us through 
the year ? ' Emerson says quaintly, " Seventy 
salads measure the life of a man." The things, 
whether of flower or fruit, that we can have but 
once a year, mark off our lives. A lover might 
thus tell the age of his lady-love : " Seventeen 
times had the jessamine blossomed since she 
came into the world." The time of the bloom 
of the jessamine is about two months. In the 
middle of January, when we came down, it was 
barely budded : the 25 th of March, and it is 
past. 

But, not to give all our time to flowers, we 



142 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

must now fulfil our promise to answer letters, 
and give practical information. 

A gentleman propounds to us the following 
inquiry: "Apart from the danger from frosts, 
what is the prospect of certainty in the orange- 
crop ? Is it a steady one ? " 

We have made diligent inquiry from old, expe- 
rienced cultivators, and from those who have 
collected the traditions of orange-growing ; and 
the result seems to be, that, apart from the 
danger of frost, the orange-crop is the most 
steady and certain of any known fruit. 

In regard to our own grove, consisting of a 
hundred and fifteen trees on an acre and a half 
of ground, we find that there has been an aver- 
age crop matured of sixty thousand a year for 
each of the five years we have had it. Two 
years the crop was lost through sudden frost 
coming after it was fully perfected ; but these 
two years are the only ones since 1835 



SWAMPS AND ORANGE-TREES. 143 

when a crop has been lost or damaged through 
frost. 

Our friend inquires with regard to the orange- 
insect. This was an epidemic which prevailed 
some fifteen or twenty years ago, destroying the 
orange-trees as the canker-worms did the apple- 
trees. It was a variety of the scale-bug ; but 
nothing has been seen of it in an epidemic form 
for many years, and growers now have no appre- 
hensions from this source. 

The wonderful vital and productive power of 
the orange-tree would not be marvelled at could 
one examine its roots. The ground all through 
our grove is a dense mat or sponge of fine 
yellow roots, which appear like a network on the 
least displacing of the sand. Every ramification 
has its feeder, and sucks up food for the tree 
with avidity. The consequence is, that people 
who have an orange-grove must be contented 
with that, and not try to raise flowers ; but, rev- 



144 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

ertheless, we do try, because we can't help it. 
But every fertilizer that we put upon our roses 
and flower-beds is immediately rushed after by 
these hungry yellow orange-roots. At the root 
of our great live-oak we wanted a little pet colony 
of flowers, and had muck and manure placed 
there to prepare for them. In digging there 
lately, we found every particle of muck and 
manure netted round with the fine, embracing 
fibres from the orange-tree ten feet off. The 
consequence is, that our roses grow slowly, and 
our flower-garden is not a success. 

Oleanders, cape-jessamines, pomegranates, and 
crape-myrtles manage, however, to stand their 
ground. Any strong, woody-fibred plant does 
better than more delicate flowers ; as people who 
will insist upon their rights, and fight for them, 
do best in the great scramble of life. 

But what a bouquet of sweets is an orange- 
tree ! Merely as a flowering-tree it is worth 



SWAMPS AND ORANGE-TREES. 145 

having, if for nothing else. We call the time of 
their budding the week of pearls. How beauti- 
fjl, how almost miraculous, the leaping-forth 
of these pearls to gem the green leaves ! The 
fragrance has a stimulating effect on our nerves, 
— a sort of dreamy intoxication. The air, now, 
is full of it. Under the trees the white shell- 
petals drift, bearing perfume. 

But, not to lose our way in poetic raptures, we 
return to statistics drawn from a recent conver- 
sation with our practical neighbor. He has 
three trees in his grounds, which this year have 
each borne five thousand oranges. He says that 
he has never failed of a steady crop from any 
cause, except in the first of the two years named ; 
and, in that case, it is to be remembered the fruit 
was perfected, and only lost by not being gath- 
ered. 

He stated that he had had reports from two 
men whom he named, who had each gathered 



146 PALMETTO-LEAVES. 

ten thousand from a single tree. He appeared 
to think it a credible story, though a very 
remarkable yield. 

The orange can be got from seed. Our 
neighbor's trees, the largest and finest in 
Mandarin, are seedlings. Like ours, they 
were frozen down in 1835, ^.nd subsequently 
almost destroyed by the orange-insect ; but 
now they are stately, majestic trees of won- 
derful beauty. The orange follows the quality 
of the seed, and needs no budding ; and in our 
region this mode of getting the trees is univer- 
sally preferred. Fruit may be expected from the 
seed in six years, when high cultivation is prac- 
tised. A cultivator in our neighborhood saw a 
dozen trees, with an average of three hundred 
oranges on each, at seven years from the seed. 
Young seedling plants of three years' growth 
can be bought in the nurseries on the St. John's 
River. 



SWAMPS AND ORANGE-TREES. 147 

Our young folks have been thrown into a state 
of great excitement this afternoon by the intro- 
duction among them of two live alligators. Our 

friend Mr. P went for them to the lair of 

the old alligator, which he describes as a hole in 
the bank, where the eggs are laid. Hundreds of 
little alligators were crawling in and out, the 
parents letting them shift for themselves. They 
feed upon small fish. Our young protege 
snapped in a very suggestive manner at a stick 
offered to him, and gave an energetic squeak. 
We pointed out to the children, that, if it were 
their finger or toe that was in the stick's place, 
the consequences might be serious. After all, 
we have small sympathy with capturing these 
poor monsters. We shall have some nice tales 
to tell of them anon. Meanwhile our paper 
must end here. 



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LETTER-WRITING. 

April 14. 

lUR Palmetto correspondence increases 

daily. Our mail comes only twice a 

week ; and, as the result of the two 

last mails, we find fifteen letters, propounding 

various inquiries about Florida. Now, it would 

be a most delightful thing to be on sociable 

terms with all the world ; and we would be glad 

to reply to each one of these letters. Many of 

them are sprightly and amusing : all are writ- 
148 



LETTER-WRITING. 1 49 

ten in good faith, containing most natural and 
rational inquiries. But, let any one attempt the 
task of writing fifteen letters on one subject, 
and he will soon find that it is rather more than 
can be done by one who expects to do any thing 
else. 

Some of the inquiries, however, we may as 
well dispose of in the beginning of this letter. 

And first as to the little boy who has lost his 
cat, and wishes to know if we cannot spare 
Peter to take her place. Alas ! we have a tale 
of sadness to unfold. When we began our 
"Palmetto-Leaves," we were the embarrassed 
possessor of four thrifty cats : now every one 
of them has passed to the land of shades, and 
we are absolutely catless. Peter, we regret to 
say, was killed in consequence of being mis- 
taken for a rabbit, one moonlight night, by an 
enterprising young sportsman ; Annie was un- 
fortunately drowned ; and 'Cindy fell victim to 



1 50 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

some similar hallucination of the young son-of-a- 
gun who destroyed Peter. In short, only our 
old family mother-cat remained ; but, as she had 
a fine litter of kittens, there was hope that :he 
line would be continued. We established her 
sumptuously in a box in the back-shed with her 
nurslings ; but, as cruel Fate would have it, a 
marauding dog came smelling about, and a fight 
ensued, in which Puss's fore-leg was broken, or, 
to speak quite literally, chewed up. 

Wounded ^nd bleeding, but plucky to the last, 
she drove off the dog with a "predestined 
scratched face," and, taking up her kittens one 
by one in her mouth, traversed a long veranda, 
jumped through a window into the bed-room of 
one of her mistresses, and deposited her nurs- 
lings under the bed. 

All agreed that a cat of such spirit and gal- 
lantry had shown that she ought to vote by her 
ability to fight, and that she was at least worthy 



LETTER-WRITING. 15 1 

of distinguished attention. So the next day 
the whole family sat in council on the case. 
Chloroform was administered : and, while Puss 
was insensible, a promising young naturalist set 
and bandaged the limb ; but, alas ! without avail. 
The weather was hot ; and the sufferings of the 
poor creature soon became such, that we were 
thankful that we had the power, by a swift and 
painless death, to put an end to them. So a 
pistol-ball sent Puss to the land where the good 
cats go ; and the motherless kitties found peace 
under the blue waters of the St. John's. The 
water-nymphs, undoubtedly, " held up their 
pearled wrists and took them in," and doubtless 
made blessed pets of them. So that is the end 
of all our cats. 

Phoebus rejoices now; for there is none to 
molest or make him afraid. His songs increase 
daily in variety. He pipes and whistles ; occa- 
sionally breaks forth into a litany that sounds 



152 PALMETTO-LEAVES. 

like " Pray do, pray do, pray do ! " then, sud- 
denly changing the stop, he shouts, " De deevil ! 
de deevil ! de deevil ! " but, as he is otherwise a 
bird of the most correct habits, it cannot be 
supposed that any profanity is intended. This 
morning being Sunday, he called " Beecher, 
Beecher, Beecher ! " very volubly. He evi- 
dently is a progressive bird, and, for aught we 
know, may yet express himself on some of the 
questions of the day. 

The next letter on our file wants to know the 
prices of board at Green-Cove Springs, Magno- 
lia, and Hibernia. The prices at these places 
vary ail the way from twelve to thirty-five dollars 
per week, according to accommodations. The 
higher prices are in larger hotels, and the 
smaller in private boarding-houses. " The Flor- 
ida Guide " says board can be obtained in Jack- 
sonville, in private families, at from eight to ten 
dollars per week. 



LE TTER- WRITING. 1 5 3 

There are three more letters, asking questions 
about the culture of the orange ; to which the 
writers will find answers, so far as we can give 
them, when we come to speak of the orange- 
orchards up the river. 

A lady writes to ask if we know any way of 
preserving figs. 

Practically, we know nothing about the fig- 
harvest, having never been here when they were 
ripe. Our friends tell us that they are not suc- 
cessful in preserving them in cans. They make 
a delicious though rather luscious preserve done 
in the ordinary way, like peaches. But we will 
give our inquiring friend the benefit of a piece 
of information communicated to us by an old 
native Floridian, who professed to have raised 
and prepared figs as fine as those in Turkey, 
His receipt was as follows : " Prepare a lye from 
the ashes of the grape-vine ; have a kettle of 
this kept boiling hot over the fire ; throw i.i 



1 54 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

the figs, and let them remain two minutes ; skim 
them out and drain them on a sieve, and after- 
wards dry in the sun." Such was his receipt, 
which we have never tried. Probably any other 
strong lye would answer as well as that from the 
grape-vine. 

As to those who have asked for flowers from 
Florida, we wish it were in our power to grant 
their requests ; but these frail beauties are not 
transferable. We in our colony have taxed the 
resources of our postal arrangements to carry to 
our friends small specimens, but with no very 
encouraging results. 

We have just been making the grand roundy 
or tour up the St. John's to Enterprise, across to 
St. Augustine, and back ; which is necessary to 
constitute one an accomplished Floridian sight- 
seer: and it had been our intention to de- 
vote this letter to that trip ; but there is so 
much to say, there are so many wonders 



LETTER-WRITING. 155 

and marvels to be described, that we must 
give it a letter by itself. No dreamland on 
earth can be more unearthly in its beauty and 
glory than the St. John's in April. Tourists, for 
the most part, see it only in winter, when half 
its gorgeous forests stand bare of leaves, and 
go home, never dreaming what it would be like 
in its resurrection-robes. So do we, in our dark- 
ness, judge the shores of the river of this mortal 
life up which we sail, ofttimes disappointed and 
complaining. We are seeing all things in 
winter, and not as they will be when God shall 
w:pe away all tears, and bring about the new 
heavens and new earth, of which every spring 
is a symbol and a prophecy. The flowers and 
leaves of last year vanish for a season ; but they 
come back fresher and fairer than ever. 

This bright morning we looked from the roof 
of our veranda, and our neighbor's oleander-trees 
were glowing like a great crimson cloud ; and we 



1 56 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

said, " There ! the oleanders have come back ! * 
No Northern ideas can give the glory of these 
trees as they raise their heads in this their native 
land, and seem to be covered with great crimson 
roses. The poor stunted bushes of Northern 
greenhouses are as much like it as our 
stunted virtues and poor frost-nipped enjoy- 
ments shall be like the bloom and radiance of 
God's paradise hereafter. In April they begin 
to bloom ; and they bloom on till November. 
Language cannot do justice to the radiance, 
the brightness, the celestial calm and glory, 
of these spring days. There is an assur- 
ance of perpetuity in them. You do not say, as 
at the North, that a fine day is a "weather- 
breeder," and expect a week of storms to pay 
for it. Day after day passes in brightness. 
Morning after morning, you wake to see the same 
sunshine gilding the tops of the orange-trees, and 
hear the same concert of birds. All the forest- 



LETTER-WRITING. 1 57 

trees stand in perfected glory ; and the leaves 
have sprung forth with such rapidity and elastic 
vigor as gives the foliage a wondrous brightness. 
The black-jack oaks — trees which, for some rea- 
son or other, are apt to be spoken t)f as of small 
account — have now put forth their large, sharply- 
cut, oak-shaped leaves. We say this because it 
is the only one of the oak species here that at 
all resembles the oaks we have been accustomed 
to see. The pawpaw-bushes are all burst out in 
white fringes of blossom ; and the silver bells of 
the sparkle-berry are now in their perfection. 
Under foot, a whole tribe of new flowers have 
come in place of the departed violets. The 
partridge-berry or squaw-berry of the North 
grows in the woods in dense mats, and is now 
white with its little starry blossoms. Certain 
nameless little golden balls of flowers twinkle in 
the grass and leaves like small constellations. 
We call them, for lack of botanic language, 



1 58 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

" siin-kiss'es." Our party, the other night, made 
an expedition to the "second branch," and 
brought home long vines of purple wisteria, red 
trumpet-creeper, and some sprays of white blos- 
soms unknown to us : so that our house still is 
a flower-show. Spring is as much a pomp and a 
glory here as in Northern States ; for although the 
winter is far more endurable, and preserves far 
more beauty, yet the outburst of vividness and 
vigor when the sun begins to wax powerful is 
even greater and more marked than at the North. 
The roses are now in perfection. Ours have 
not thriven as they might have done were it not 
for the all-devouring orange-trees ; but still they 
give us every morning, with our breakfast, a 
comforting assortment. La Marque, Giant of 
Battles, Hermosa, a little cluster rose, and a 
d^zen more, have brightened our repast. This 
is the land to raise roses, however ; and we mean 
yet to have a rose-garden at a safe distance from 



LETTER-WRITING. . 159 

any orange-trees, and see what will come of it. 
Here are no slugs or rose-bugs or caterpillars 
to make rose-culture a burden and a vexation. 
Finally, as we have had so many letters askmg 
information of us, we wish somebody who is 
wise enough would write one, and give us some 
on a certain point. One of our orange-trees has 
become an invalid. The case may be stated as 
follows : Early in the season, Mr. R, in looking 
over the grove, found this tree, then loaded with 
fruit, dropping its leaves ; the leaves curling, or, as 
they say here, "rolling," as is the fashion of or- 
ange-trees when suffering from drought. Imme- 
diately he took all the fruit from the tree, pruned 
it, dug about the roots, and examined them to find 
something to account for this. For a while, by 
careful tending, the tree seemed to be coming 
to itself; but, when the blossoming-time came 
round, half its leaves fell, and it burst into blos- 
soms on every spray and twig in the most pre- 



l60 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

ternatural manner. It reminded us of some poor 
dear women, who, when they lose their health, 
seem resolved to kill themselves in abundant good 
works. It was really blossoming to death. 
Now, we ask any wise fruit-growers. What is this 
disease ? and how is it to be treated .'* We have 
treated it by cutting off all the blossoms, cutting 
back the branches, watering with water in which 
guano and lime have been dissolved ; and the 
patient looks a little better. A negro workman 
testified that a tree in a similar state had been 
brought back by these means. Can any fruit- 
grower give any light on this subject ? 




MAGNOLIA WEEK. 



April 20. 




IT is vain to propose and announce 
subjects from week to week. One 
must write what one is thinking of. 
When the mind is full of one thing, why go 
about to write on another ? 

The past week we have been engrossed by 

magnolias. On Monday, our friend D , 

armed and equipped with scaling-ladders, as- 
cended the glistening battlements of the great 
II 161 



l62 PALMETTO-LEA FES. 

forest palaces fronting his cottage, and bore 
thence the white princesses, just bursting into 
bud, and brought them down to us. Forthwith 
all else was given up : for whc would take the 
portrait of the white lady must hurry ; for, like 
many queens of earth, there is but a step be- 
tween perfected beauty and decay, — a moment 
between beauty and ashes. 

We bore them to our chamber, and before 
morning the whole room was filled with the in- 
toxicating, dreamy fragrance ; and lo ! while we 
slept, the pearly hinges had revolved noiselessly, 
and the bud that we left the evening before had 
become a great and glorious flower. To de- 
scend to particulars, imagine a thick, waxen- 
cupped peony of the largest size, just revealing 
in its centre an orange-colored cone of the size 
of a walnut. Around it, like a circlet of emer- 
alds, were the new green leaves, contrasting in 
their vivid freshness with the solid, dark-green 



MAGNOLIA WEEK. 1 63 

brilliancy of the old foliage. The leaves of the 
magnolia are in themselves beauty enough with- 
out the flower. We used to gather them in a 
sort of rapture before we ever saw the blossom ; 
but all we can say of the flower is, that it is 
worthy of them. 

We sat down before this queen of flowers, and 
worked assiduously at her portrait. We had, 
besides the full blossom, one bud of the size and 
shape of a large ^%g, which we despaired of see- 
ing opened, but proposed to paint as it was. The 
second morning, our green ^gg began to turn 
forth a silver lining ; and, as we worked, we could 
see it slowly opening before us. Silvery and 
pearly were the pure tips ; while the outside was 
of a creamy yellow melting into green. Two 
days we kept faithful watch and ward at the 
shrine ; but, lo ! on the morning of the third our 
beautiful fairy had changed in the night to an 
ugly brownie. The petals, so waxen fair the 



l64 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

night before, had become of a mahogany color ; 
and a breeze passing by swept them dishonored 
in showers on the floor. The history of that 
magnolia was finished. We had seen it imfold 
and die. Our pearly bud, however, went on 
waxing and opening till its day came for full 
perfection. 

The third day, our friend again brought in a 
glorious bouquet. No ordinary flower-vase 
would hold it. It required a heavy stone jar, 
and a gallon of water ; but we filled the recess 
of our old-fashioned Franklin stove with the 
beauties, and the whole house was scented with 
their perfume. 

Then we thought of the great lonely swamps 
and e's'erglades where thousands of these beau- 
ties are now bursting into flower with no earthly 
eye to behold them. 

The old German legends of female spirits in- 
habiting trees recurred to us. Our magnolia 



MAGNOLIA WEEK. 165 

would make a beautiful Libussa. A flower is 
commonly thought the emblem of a woman ; and 
a woman is generally thought of as something 
sweet, clinging, tender, and perishable. But 
there are women flowers that correspond to the 
forest magnolia, — high and strong, with a great 
hold of root and a great spread of branches ; and 
whose pulsations of heart and emotion come 
forth like these silver lilies that illuminate the 
green shadows of the magnolia-forests. 

Yesterday, our friend the Rev. Mr. M 

called and invited us to go with him to visit his 
place, situated at the mouth of Julington, just 
where it flows into the St. John's. Our obliging 
neighbor immediately proposed to take the 
whole party in his sailing-yacht. 

An impromptu picnic was proclaimed through 
the house. Every one dropped the work in 
hand, and flew to spreading sandwiches. 
Oranges were gathered, luncheon -baskets 



l66 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

packed ; and the train filed out firom the two 
houses. The breeze was fresh and fair; and 
away we flew. Here, on the St. John's, a water- 
coach is more to the purpose, in the present 
state of our wood-roads, than any land-carriage ; 
and the delight of sailing is something infi- 
nitely above any other locomotion. On this 
great, beautiful river you go drifting like a 
feather or a cloud ; while the green, fragrant 
shores form a constantly-varying picture as you 
pass. Yesterday, as we were sailing, we met a 
little green, floating island, which seemed to 
have started out on its own account, and gone to 
seek its fortune. We saw it at first in the dis- 
tance, — a small, undulating spot of vivid green. 
Our little craft was steered right alongside, so 
that we could minutely observe. It was some 
half-dozen square yards of pickerel-weed, bonnet 
water-lettuce, and other water-plants, which, it 
would seem, had concluded to colonize, and go 



MAGNOLIA WEEK. 1 67 

out to see the world in company. We watched 
them as they went nodding and tilting off over 
the blue waters, and wondered where they would 
bring up. 

But now we are at the mouth of Julington, 
and running across to a point of land on the 
other side. Our boat comes to anchor under a 
grove of magnolia-trees which lean over the 
water. They are not yet fully in blossom. One 
lily-white bud and one full-blown flower appear 
on a low branch overhanging the river, and are 
marked to be gathered when we return. We 
go up, and begin strolling along the shore. The 
magnolia-grove extends along the edge of the 
water for half a mile. Very few flowers are yet 
developed ; but the trees themselves, in the vivid 
contrast of the new leaves with the old, are 
beauty enough. Out of the centre of the spike 
of last year's solemn green comes the most 
vivid, varnished cluster of fresh young leaves, 



l68 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

and from the centre of this brilliant cluster 
comes the flower-bud. The magnolia, being an 
evergreen, obeys in its mode of growth the law 
which governs all evergreens. When the new 
shoots come out, the back-leaves fall off. This 
produces in the magnolia a wonderfully-beauti- 
ful effect of color. As we looked up in the 
grove, each spike had, first, the young green 
leaves ; below those, the dark, heavy ones ; and 
below those still, the decaying ones, preparing to 
fall. These change with all the rich colors of 
decaying leaves. Some are of a pure, brilliant 
yellow ; others yellow, mottled and spotted with 
green ; others take a tawny orange, and again a 
faded brown. 

The afternoon sun, shining through this grove, 
gave all these effects of color in full brightness. 
The trees, as yet, had but here and there a blos- 
som. Each shoot had its bud, for the most part 
no larger than a walnut. The most advanced 



MAGNOLIA WEEK. 169 

were of the size of an egg, of white tinted with 
green. Beneath the trees the ground was 
thickly strewn with the golden brown and 
mottled leaves, which were ever and anon sail- 
ing down as the wind swayed them. 

Numbers of little seedling magnolias were 
springing up everywhere about us ; and we easily 
pulled up from the loose yielding soil quite a 
number of them, wrapping their roots in the 
gray moss which always lies at hand for packing- 
purposes. 

The place had many native wild orange-trees, 
which had been cut off and budded with the 
sweet orange, and were making vigorous 
growth. Under the shade of the high live-oaks 

Mr. M had set out young orange and 

lemon trees through quite an extent of the 
forest. He told us that he had two thousand 
plants thus growing. It is becoming a favorite 
idea with fruit-planters here, that the tropical 



I/O PALMETTO-LEAVES. 

fruits are less likely to be injured by frosts, and 
make a more rapid and sure growth, under the 
protecting shadow of live-oaks. The wild or- 
ange is found frequently growing in this way ; 
and they take counsel of Nature in this respect. 

After wandering a while in the wood, we pic- 
nicked under a spreading live-oak, with the 
breeze from the river drawing gratefully across 
us. 

Our dinner over, Mr. M took us through 

his plantations of grapes, peaches, and all other 
good things. Black Hamburg grapes grafted 
upon the root of the native vine had made luxu- 
riant growth, and were setting full of grapes. 
There were shoots of this year's growth full six 
and seven feet in length. In the peach-orchard 
were trees covered with young peaches, which 

Mr. M told us were only three years from 

the seed. All the garden vegetables were there 
in fine order ; and the string-beans appeared to 
be in full maturity. 



MAGNOLIA WEEK. 171 

It is now five years since Mr. M bought 

and began to clear tliis place, then a dense for- 
est. At first, the letting-in of the sun on the 
decaying vegetation, and the upturning of the 
soil, made the place unhealthy ; and it was found 
necessary to remove the family. Now the work 
is done, the place cleared, and, he says, as 
healthy as any other. 

Mr. M is an enthusiastic horticulturist 

and florist, and is about to enrich the place with 
a rose-garden of some thousands of choice 
varieties. These places in Florida must not in 
any wise be compared with the finished ones of 
Northern States. They are spots torn out of 
the very heart of the forest, and where Nature is 
rebelling daily, and rushing with all her might 
back again into the wild freedom from which she 
has been a moment led captive. 

But a day is coming when they will be won- 
derfully beautiful and productive. 



1 72 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

We had one adventure in conquering and 
killing a formidable-looking black-snake about 
seven feet in length. He had no fangs, and, Mr. 

M told us, belonged to a perfectly respectable 

and harmless family, whose only vice is chicken- 
stealing. They are called chicken-snakes, in 
consequence of the partiality they show for 
young chickens, which they swallow, feathers 
and all, with good digestion and relish. He in- 
formed us that they were vigorous ratters, and 
better than either terrier or cat for keeping 
barns clear of rats ; and that for this purpose 
they were often cherished in granaries, as they 
will follow the rats to retreats where cats cannot 
go. Imagine the feelings of a rat when this 
dreadful visitor comes like grim death into his 
family-circle ! 

In regard to snakes in general, the chance of 
meeting hurtful ones in Florida is much less 
than in many other States. Mr. M , who in 



MAGNOLIA WEEK. 1 73 

the way of his mission has ridden all through 
Florida, never yet met a rattlesnake, or was 
endangered by any venomous serpent. Perhaps 
the yearly burnings of the grass which have 
been practised so long in Florida have had 
some effect in checking the increase of serpents 
by destroying their eggs. 

As the afternoon sun waxed low we sought 
our yacht again, and came back with two mag- 
nolia-flowers and several buds. 

This week, too, the woods are full of the 
blossoms of the passion-flower. 

Our neighbor Mr. C has bought the beauti- 
ful oak-hammock, where he is preparing to build a 
house. Walking over to see the spot the other 
evening, we found a jungle of passion-flowers 
netted around on the ground, and clinging to 
bush and tree. Another neighbor also brought 
us in some branches of a flowering-shrub called 
the Indian pipe, which eclipses the sparkle- 



1 74 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

berry. Like that, it seems to be a glorified 
variety of high huckleberry or blueberry. It 
has the greatest profusion of waxen white bells 
fringing every twig ; and, blase as we have been 
with floral displays, we had a new sensation 
when it was brought into the house. 

Thus goes the floral procession in April in 
the wild-woods. In the gardens, the oleanders, 
pink, white, and deep crimson, are beginning 
their long season of bloom. The scarlet pome- 
granate, with its vivid sparks of color, shines 
through the leaves. 

We are sorry for all those who write to beg 
that we will send by mail a specimen of this or 
that flower. Our experience has shown us that 
in that way they are 7iot transferable. Magnolia- 
buds would arrive dark and dreadful ; and it is 
far better to view the flowers ever fresh and 
blooming, through imagination, than to receive 
a desolate, faded, crumpled remnant by mail. 




BUYING LAND IN FLORIDA. 



May 2. 




E have before us a neat little pile of 
what we call " Palmetto letters," — re- 
f sponses to our papers from all States 
in the Union. Our knowledge of geography 
has really been quite brightened by the effort to 
find out where all our correspondents are liv- 
ing. Nothing could more mark the exceptional 
severity of the recent winter than the bursts of 
enthusiasm with which the tidings of flowers 

175 



1 7^ PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

and open-air freedom in Florida have come to 
those struggling through snow-drifts and hail- 
storms in the more ungenial parts of our Union. 
Florida seems to have risen before their vision 
as the hymn sings of better shores : — 

" On Jordan's stormy banks I stand, 
And cast a wistful eye 
To Canaan's fair and happy land." 

Consequently, the letters of inquiry have 
come in showers. What is the price of land t 
Where shall we go .-* How shall we get there .•* 
&c. 

We have before advertised you, O beloved 
unknown ! who write, that your letters are wel- 
come, ofttimes cheering, amusing, and undenia- 
bly nice letters ; yet we cannot pledge ourselves 
to answer, except in the gross, and through " The 
Christian Union." The last inquiry is from 
three brothers, who want to settle and have 



BUYING LAND IN FLORIDA. 1 77 

homes together at the South. They ask, "Is 
there government land that can be had in Flor- 
ida ? ' Yes, there is a plenty of it ; yet, as 
Florida is the oldest settled State in the Union, 
and has always been a sort of bone for which 
adventurers have wrangled, the best land in it 
has been probably taken up. We do not pro- 
fess to be land-agents ; and we speak only for 
the tract of land lying on the St. John's River, 
between Mandarin and Jacksonville, when we 
say that there are thousands of acres of good 
land, near to a market, near to a great river on 
which three or four steamboats are daily plying, 
that can be had for five dollars per acre, and for 
even less than that. Fine, handsome building- 
lots in the neighborhood of Jacksonville are 
rising in value, commanding much higher prices 
than the mere productive value of the land. In 
other words, men pay for advantages, for soci- 
ety, for facilities afforded by settlements. 



I yS PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

Now, for the benefit of those who are seri- 
ously thinking of coming to Florida, we have 
taken some pains to get the practical experience 
of men who are now working the land, as to 
what it will do. On the 2d of May, we 
accepted the invitation of Col. Hardee to visit 
his pioneer nursery, now in the fourth year of 
its existence. Mr. Hardee is an enthusiast in 
his business ; and it is a department where we 
are delighted to see enthusiasm. The close of 
the war found him, as he said, miserably poor. 
But, brave and undiscouraged, he retained his 
former slaves as free laborers ; took a tract of 
land about a mile and a half from Jacksonville ; 
put up a house ; cleared, planted, ploughed, and 
digged : and, in the course of four years, results 
are beginning to tell handsomely, as they always 
do for energy and industry. He showed us 
through his grounds, where every thing was 
growing at the rate things do grow here in the 



BUYING LAND IN FLORIDA. 1 79 

month of May. Two things Mr. Hardee seems 
to have demonstrated : first, that strawberry- 
culture may be a success in Florida; and, 
second, that certain varieties of Northern apples 
and pears may be raised here. We arrived in 
Florida in the middle of January ; and one of 
the party who spent a night at the St. James 
was surprised by seeing a peck of fresh, ripe 
strawberries brought in. They were from Mr. 
Hardee's nursery, and grown in the open air ; 
and he informed us that they had, during all the 
winter, a daily supply of the fruit, sufficient for a 
large family, and a considerable overplus for the 
market. The month of May, however, is the 
height of the season ; and they were picking, 
they informed us, at the rate of eighty quarts 
per day. 

In regard to apples and pears, Mr. Hardee's 
method is to graft them upon the native haw- 
thorn ; and the results are really quite wonder- 



1 80 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

ful. Mr. Hardee was so complaisant as to cut 
and present to us a handsome cluster of red 
Astrachan apples about the size of large hickory- 
nuts, the result of the second year from the graft. 
Several varieties of pears had made a truly 
astonishing growth, and promise to fruit, in time, 
abundantly. A large peach-orchard presented 
a show of peaches, some of the size of a butter- 
nut, and some of a walnut. Concerning one 
which he called the Japan peach, he had san- 
guine hope of ripe fruit in ten days. We were 
not absolute in the faith as to the exact date, 
but believe that there will undoubtedly be ripe 
peaches there before the month of May is out. 
Mr. Hardee is particularly in favor of cultivating 
fruit in partially-shaded ground. Most of these 
growths we speak of were under the shade of 
large live-oaks ; but when he took us into the 
wild forest, and showed us peach, orange, and 
lemon trees set to struggle for existence on the 



BUYING LAND IN FLORIDA. l8l 

same footing, and with only the same advantages, 
as the wild denizens of the forest, we rather 
demurred. Was not this pushing theory to ex- 
tremes ? Time will show. 

Col. Hardee has two or three native seedling 
peaches grown in Florida, of which he speaks 
highly, — Mrs. Thompson's Golden Free, which 
commences ripening in June, and continues till 
the first of August ; the " Cracker Cart," very 
large, weighing sometimes thirteen ounces ; the 
Cling Yellow ; and the Japan, very small and 
sweet, ripening in May. 

Besides these, Mr. Hardee has experimented 
largely in vines, in which he gives preference to 
the Isabella, Hartford Prolific, and Concord. 

He is also giving attention to roses and orna- 
mental shrubbery. What makes the inception 
of such nurseries as Mr. Hardee's a matter of 
congratulation is that they furnish to purchasers 
things that have been proved suited to the 



C82 PALMETTO-LEA FES. 

climate and soil of Florida. Peach-trees, roses, 
and grapes, sent from the North, bring here the 
habit of their Northern growth, which often 
makes them worthless. With a singular stub- 
bornness, they adhere to the times and seasons 
to which they have been accustomed farther 
North. We set a peach-orchard of some four 
hundred trees which we obtained from a nursery 
in Georgia. We suspect now, that, having a 
press of orders, our nurseryman simply sent us 
a packet of trees from some Northern nursery. 
The consequence is, that year after year, when 
all nature about them is bursting into leaf and 
blossom, when peaches of good size gem the 
boughs of Florida trees, our peach-orchard 
stands sullen and leafless ; nor will it start bud or 
blossom till the time for peaches to start in New 
York. The same has been our trouble with 
some fine varieties of roses which we took 
from our Northern grounds. As yet, they are 



BUYING LAND IN FLORIDA. 1 83 

hardly worth the ground they occupy ; and 
whether they ever will do any thing is a matter 
of doubt. Meanwhile we have only to ride a 
little way into the pine-woods to see around 
many a rustic cabin a perfect blaze of crimson 
roses and cluster roses, foaming over the fences 
in cascades of flowers. These are Florida roses, 
born and bred ; and this is the way they do with 
not one tithe of the work and care that we have 
expended on our poor Northern exiles. Mr. 
Hardee, therefore, in attempting the pioneer 
nursery of Florida, is doing a good thing for 
every new-comer ; and we wish him all success. 
As a parting pfesent, we received a fine summer 
squash, which, for the first of May, one must 
admit is good growth. And now, for the benefit 
of those who may want to take up land in 
Florida, we shall give the experience of some 
friends and neighbors of ours who have carried 



l84 PALMETTO-LEAVES. 

through about as thorough and well-conducted 
an experiment as any ; and we give it from mem- 
oranda which they have kindly furnished, in the 
hope of being of use to other settlers. 





OUR EXPERIENCE IN CROPS. 

FEW years ago, three brothers, farm- 
ers, from Vermont, exhausted by the 
long, hard winters there, came to 
Florida to try an experiment. They bought two 
hundred and seventy-five acres in the vicinity of 
Mandarin at one dollar per acre. It was pine- 
land, that had been cut over twice for timber, 
and was now considered of no further value by 
its possessor, who threw it into the hands of a 

185 



l86 PALMETTO-LEAVES. 

land-agent to make what he could of it. It was 
the very cheapest kind of Florida land. 

Of this land they cleared only thirty-five 
acres. The fencing cost two hundred dollars. 
They put up a large, unplastered, two-story 
house, with piazzas to both floors, at a cost of 
about a thousand dollars. The additional outlay 
was on two mules and a pair of oxen, estimated 
at four hundred dollars. The last year, they put 
up a sugar-mill and establishment at a cost of 
five hundred dollars. 

An orange-grove, a vineyard, and a peach- 
orchard, are all included in the programme of 
these operators, and are all well under way. But 
these are later results. It is not safe to calcu- 
late on an orange-grove under ten years, or on a 
vineyard or peach-orchard under four or five. 

We have permission to copy verbatim certain 
memoranda of results with which they have 
furnished us. 



OUR EXPERIENCE IN CROPS. 1 8; 
CABBAGES. 

First Year. — Sowed seed in light sandy soil 
ivithout manure. Weak plants, beaten down by 
rain, lost. 

Second Year. — Put out an acre and a half 
of fine plants : large part turned out poorly. 
Part of the land was low, sour, and wet, and all 
meagrely fertilized. Crop sold in Jacksonville 
for two hundred and fifty dollars. 

Third Year. — Three acres better, but still 
inadequately manured, and half ruined by the 
Christmas frost: brought about eight hundred 
dollars. 

Fourth Year (1871-72.) — Two acres better 
manured ; planted in low land, on ridges five feet 
apart : returned six hundred dollars. In favorable 
seasons, with good culture, an acre of cabbages 
should yield a gross return of five hundred 
dollars, of which three hundred would be clear 
profit. 



I88 PALMETTO-LEAVES. 



CUCUMBERS 

First Year. — Planted four acres, mostly new, 
hard, sour land, broad-casting fifty bushels of 
lime to the acre, and using some weak, half- 
rotted compost in the hills : wretched crop. 
The whole lot sent North : did not pay for ship- 
ment. 

Second Year. — An acre and a half best land, 
heavily manured with well-rotted compost worked 
into drills eight feet apart : yielded fifty bushels, 
which brought two hundred and fifty dollars in 
New York. More would have been realized, ex- 
cept that an untimely hail-storm spoiled the vines 
prematurely. 

Third Year. — An acre and a half, well cul- 
tivated and manured, yielded four hundred 
bushels, and brought a gross return of thirteen 
hundred dollars. 



OUR EXPERIENCE IN CROPS. 1 89 
TOMATOES. 

First Year, — Lost many plants through rain 
and wet, and insufficient manure. Those we got 
to the New- York market brought from four to 
six dollars per bushel. 

Second Year. — Manured too heavily in the 
hill with powerful unfermented manures. A 
heavy rain helped ruin the crop. Those, how- 
ever, which we sent to market, brought good 
prices. 

Third F^^r. — None planted for market ; but 
those for family use did so well as to put us in 
good humor with the crop, and induce us to 
plant for this year. 

SWEET-POTATOES. 

Every year we have had pretty good success 
with them on land well prepared with lime and 
ashes. We have had three hundred and fifty 
bushels to the acre. 



1 90 PALME TTO-LEA VES. 



SUGAR-CANE 



Has done very respectably on one-year-old soil 
manured with ashes only ; while mellow land, 
well prepared with muck, ashes, and fish-guano, 
has yielded about twenty barrels of sugar to the 
acre. 

IRISH POTATOES. 

We have found these on light soil, with only 
moderate fertilizing, an unprofitable crop at four 
dollars, but on good land, with very heavy ma- 
nuring, decidedly profitable at two dollars per 
bushel. Fine potatoes rarely are less than that 
in Jacksonville. They will be ready to dig in 
April and May. 

PEAS 

May be extraordinarily profitable, and may fail 
entirely. A mild winter, without severe frosts, 
would bring them early into market. The 



OUR EXPERIENCE IN CROPS. 191 

Christmas freeze of 1870 caught a half-acre of 
our peas in blossom, and killed them to the 
ground. 

Planted in the latter part of January, both 
peas and potatoes are pretty sure. We have not 
done much with peas ; but a neighbor of ours 
prefers them to cabbages. He gets about three 
dollars per bushel. 

As a general summary, our friend adds, — 
" For two years in succession, we have found 
our leading market-crops handsomely remunera- 
tive. The net returns look well compared with 
those of successful gardening near New York. 
Cabbages raised here during the fall and winter, 
without any protection, bear as good price as do 
the spring cabbages which are raised in cold- 
frames at the North ; and early cucumbers, 
grown in the open air, have been worth as much 
to us as to Northern gardeners who have grown 
them in hot-beds. 



192 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

" The secret of our success is an open one ; but 
we ourselves do not yet come up to cur mark, 
and reduce our preaching to practice. We have 
hardly made a good beginning in high manuring. 
We did not understand at first, as we now do, 
the difference between ordinary crops and early 
vegetables and fruits. Good corn may be raised 
on poor land at the rate of five or ten bushels to 
the acre ; but, on a hundred acres of scantily-fer- 
tilized land, scarcely a single handsome cabbage 
can be grown. So with cucumbers : they will 
neither be early, nor fit for market, if raised on 
ordinary land with ordinary culture. Most of 
the market-gardening in Florida, so far as we 
know it, cannot but prove disastrous. Land- 
agents and visionaries hold forth that great 
crops may be expected from insignificant out- 
lays ; and so they decoy the credulous to their 
ruin. To undertake raising vegetables in Flori- 
da, with these ideas of low culture, is to embark 



OUR EXPERIENCE IN CROPS. 193 

in a leaky and surely-sinking ship. If one is 
unwilling to expend for manure alone upon a 
single acre in one year enough to buy a hun- 
dred acres of new land, let him give a wide 
berth to market-gardening. Such expenditures 
have to be met at the North ; and there is no 
getting round it at the South. 

"Yet one can economize here as one cannot at 
the North. The whole culture of an early vege- 
table-garden can go on in connection with the 
later crop of sugar-cane. Before our cabbages 
were off the ground this spring, we had our 
cane-rows between them ; and we never before 
prepared the ground and planted the cane so 
easily. On another field we have the cane-rows 
eight feet apart, and tomatoes and snap-beans 
intervening. We have suffered much for lack 
of proper drainage. We have actually lost 
enough from water standing upon crops to have 
underdrained the whole enclosure. We under- 

«3 



194 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

look to till more acres than we could do justice 
to. In farming, the love of acres is the root of 
all evil." 

So much for our friend's experiences. We 
consider this experiment a most valuable one for 
all who contemplate buying land and settling in 
Florida. It is an experiment in which untiring 
industry, patience, and economy have been 
brought into exercise. It has been tried on the 
very cheapest land in Florida, and its results are 
most instructive. 

Market-gardening must be the immediate 
source of support ; and therefore this experiment 
is exactly in point. 

This will show that the land is the leas.t of the 
expense in starting a farm ; and that it is best, 
in the first instance, to spend little for land, and 
much for the culture of it. 

Thousands of people pour down into Florida 
to winter, and must be fed. The Jacksonville 



OUR EXPERIENCE IN CROPS. 1 95 

market, and the markets of all the different 
♦ boarding establishments on the river, need 
ample supplies ; and there is no fear that there 
will not be a ready sale for all that could be 
raised. 

Our friends are willing to make a free con- 
tribution of their own failures and mistakes for 
the good of those who come after. It shows that 
a new country must be studied and tried before 
success is attained. New-comers, by settling in 
the vicinity of successful planters, may shorten 
the painful paths of experience. 

All which we commend to all those who have 
written to inquire about buying land in Florida. 





MAY IN FLORIDA. 

Mandarin, May 28, 1872. 
HE month of May in Florida corre- 
sponds to July and August at the 
north. 

Strawberries, early peaches, blackberries, huc- 
kleberries, blueberries, and two species of wild 
plums, are the fruits of this month, and make 
us forget to want the departing oranges. Still, 
however, some of these cling to the bough ; and 
it is astonishing how juicy and refreshing they 
196 



MAY IN FLORIDA. 197 

Still are. The blueberries are larger and sweeter, 
and less given to hard seeds, than any we have 
ever tasted. In the way of garden-vegetables, 
summer squashes, string-beans, and tomatoes are 
fully in season. 

This year, for the most part, the month has 
been most delightful weather. 

With all the pomp and glory of Nature in full 
view ; beholding in the wet, low lands red, succu- 
lent shoots, which, under the moist, fiery breath of 
the season, seem really to grow an inch at a time, 
and to shoot up as by magic ; hearing bird-songs 
fining the air from morning to night, — we feel a 
sort of tropical exultation, as if great, succulent 
shoots of passion or poetry might spring up 
within us from out this growing dream-life. 

The birds ! — who can describe their jubilees, 
their exultations, their never-ending, still begin- 
ning babble and jargon of sweet sounds ? All 
day the air rings with sweet fanciful trills and 



198 PA LME TTO-LEA VES. 

melodies, as if there were a thousand little vibrat- 
ing bells. They iterate and reiterate one sweet 
sound after another ; they call to one another, 
and answer from thicket to thicket ; they pipe ; 
they whistle ; they chatter and mock at each 
other with airy defiance : and sometimes it seems 
as if the very air broke into rollicking bird- 
laughter. A naturalist, who, like Thoreau, has 
sojourned for months in the Florida forests to 
study and observe Nature, has told us that no 
true idea of the birds' plumage can be got till 
the hot months come on. Then the sun pours 
light and color, and makes feathers like steely 
armor. 

The birds love the sun : they adore him. 
Our own Phoebus, when his cage is hung on the 
shady side of the veranda, hangs sulky and 
silent ; but put him in the full blaze of the 
sun, and while the thermometer is going up to 
the nineties, he rackets in a perfectly crazy 



MAY IN FLORIDA. 199 

abandon of bird babblement, singing all he ever 
heard before, and trying his bill at new notes, 
and, as a climax, ending each outburst with a 
purr of satisfaction like an overgrown cat. 
Several pairs of family mocking-birds have their 
nests somewhere in our orange-trees ; and there 
is no end of amusement in watching their dainty 
evolutions. Sometimes, for an hour at a time, 
one of them, perched high and dry on a topmost 
twig, where he gets the full blaze of the sun, 
will make the air ring with so many notes and 
noises, that it would seem as if he were forty 
birds instead of one. Then, again, you will see 
him stealing silently about as if on some myste- 
rious mission, perching here and there with a 
peculiar nervous jerk of his long tail, and a 
silent little lift of his wings, as if he were fan- 
ning himself What this motion is for, we have 
never been able to determine. 

Our plantation, at present, is entirely given 



200 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

over to the domestic affairs of the mocking-birds, 
dozens of whom have built their nests in the 
green, inaccessible fastnesses of the orange-trees, 
and been rearing families in security. Now, 
however, the young birds are to be taught to fly ; 
and the air resounds with the bustle and chatter 
of the operation. Take, for example, one scene 
which is going on as we write. Down on the 
little wharf which passes through the swamp in 
front of our house, three or four juvenile mock- 
ing-birds are running up and down like chickens, 
uttering plaintive cries of distress. On either 
side, perched on a tall, dry, last-year's coffee- 
bean-stalk, sit 'papa and mamma," chattering, 
scolding, exhorting, and coaxing. The little 
ones run from side to side, and say in plaintive 
squeaks, " I can't," " I daren't," as plain as birds 
can say it. There ! now they spread their lit- 
tle wings ; and — oh, joy ! — they find to their 
delight that they do not fall : they exult in the 



MAY IN FLORIDA. 201 

possession of a new-born sense of existence. 
As we look at this pantomime, graver thoughts 
come over us, and we think how poor, timid little 
souls moan, and hang back, and tremble, when the 
time comes to leave this nest of earth, and trust 
themselves to the free air of the world they were 
made for. As the little bird's moans and cries 
end in delight and rapture in finding himself in a 
new, glorious, free life ; so, just beyond the dark 
step of death, will come a buoyant, exulting 
sense of new existence. Our life here is in inti- 
mate communion with bird-life. Their singing 
all day comes in bursts and snatches ; and one 
awakes to a sort of wondering consciousness of 
the many airy dialects with which the blue 
heavens are filled. At night a whippoorwill or 
two, perched in the cypress-trees, make a plain- 
tive and familiar music. When the nights are 
hot, and the moon bright, the mocking-birds 
burst into gushes of song at any hour. At mid- 



202 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

night we have risen to Hsten to them. Birds 
are as plenty about us as chickens in a barn- 
yard ; and one wonders at their incessant activity 
and motion, and studies what their quaint little 
fanciful ways may mean, half inclined to say 
with Cowper, — 

" But I, whatever powers were mine, 
Would cheerfully those gifts resign 
For such a pair of wings as thine, 
And such a head between 'em." 

Speaking of birds reminds us of a little pas- 
toral which is being enacted in the neighbor- 
hood of St. Augustine. A young man from 
Massachusetts, driven to seek health in a milder 
climate, has bought a spot of land for a nursery- 
garden in the neighborhood of St. Augustine. 
We visited his place, and found him and his 
mother in a neat little cottage, adorned only 
with grasses and flowers picked in the wild 



MAY IN FLORIDA. 203 

woods, and living in perfect familiarity with the 
birds, which they have learned to call in from 
the neighboring forests. It has become one of 
the fashionable amusements in the season for 
strangers to drive out to this cottage and see the 
birds fed. At a cry from the inmates of the 
cottage, the blue-jays and mocking-birds will 
come in flocks, settle on their shoulders, eat out 
of their hands, or out of the hands of any one 
who chooses to hold food to them. When we 
drove out, however, the birds were mostly dis- 
persed about their domestic affairs ; this being 
the nesting season. Moreover, the ample sup- 
ply of fresh wild berries in the woods makes 
them less anxious for such dry food as contented 
them in winter. Only one pet mocking-bird 
had established himself in a neighboring tree, 
and came at their call. Pic sat aloft, switching 
his long tail with a jerky air of indifference, like 
an enfant gdtS. When raisins were thrown up, 



204 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

he caught them once or twice ; but at last, with 
an evident bird-yawn, declared that it was no go, 
and he didn't care for raisins. Ungrateful Pic ! 
Next winter, eager and hungry, he will be grate- 
ful ; and so with all the rest of them. 

One of the charms of May not to be forgotten 
is the blossoming of the great Cape jessamine 
that stands at the end of the veranda, which has 
certainly had as many as three or four hundred 
great, white, fragrant flowers at once. 

As near as possible, this is the most perfect of 
flowers. It is as pure as the white camellia, with 
the added gift of exquisite perfume. It is a 
camellia with a soul ! Its leaves are of most bril- 
liant varnished green ; its buds are lovely ; and 
its expanded flower is of a thick, waxen texture, 
and as large as a large camellia. We have sat 
moonlight nights at the end of the veranda, and 
enjoyed it. It wraps one in an atmosphere of 
perfume. Only one fault has this bush : it bios- 



MAY IN FLORIDA. 20$ 

soms only once a season ; not, like the ever- 
springing oleander, for months. One feels a 
sense of hurry to enjoy and appropriate a bloom 
so rare, that lasts only a few weeks. 

Here in Florida, flowers form a large item of 
thought and conversation wherever one goes ; 
and the reason of it is the transcendent beauty 
and variety that are here presented. We have 
just returned from St. Augustine, and seen some 
gardens where wealth and leisure have expended 
themselves on flowers ; and in our next chapter 
we will tell of some of these beauties. 




ST. AUGUSTINE. 




Mandarin, May 30, 1872. 

HE thermometer with us, during the 

third week in May, rose to ninety-two 

in the shade ; and as we had received 

an invitation from a friend to visit St. Augustine, 

which is the Newport of Florida, we thought it 

a good time to go seaward. So on a pleasant 

morning we embarked on the handsome boat 

"Florence," which has taken so many up the 
206 



ST. AUGUSTINE. 20/ 

river, and thus secured all the breeze that was 
to be had. 

" The Florence " is used expressly for a river 
pleasure-boat, plying every day between Jack- 
sonville and Pilatka. It is long and airy, and 
nicely furnished ; and one could not imagine a 
more delightful conveyance. In hot weather, 
one could not be more sure of cool breezes than 
when sailing up and down perpetually in " The 
Florence." Our destiny, however, landed us in 
the very meridian of the day at Tekoi. Tekoi 
consists of a shed and a sand-bank, and a little 
shanty, where, to those who require, refresh- 
ments are served. 

On landing, we found that we must pay for 
the pleasure and coolness of coming up river 
in " The Florence " by waiting two or three 
mortal hours till " The Starlight " arrived ; for 
the railroad-car would not start till the full 
complement of passengers was secured. We 



208 PALMETTO-LEAVES. 

had a good opportunity then of testing what the 
heat of a Florida sun might be, untempered by 
Uve-oaks and orange shades, and unalleviated by 
ice-water ; and the lesson was an impressive one. 

The railroad across to St. Augustine is made 
of wooden rails ; and the cars are drawn by 
horses. 

There was one handsome car like those used 
on the New- York horse-railroads : the others 
were the roughest things imaginable. Travellers 
have usually spoken of this road with execration 
for its slowness and roughness ; but over this, 
such as it was, all the rank and fashion of our 
pleasure-seekers, the last winter, have been 
pouring in unbroken daily streams. In the 
height of the season, when the cars were 
crowded, four hours were said to be consumed 
in performing this fifteen miles. We, however, 
did it in about two. 

To us this bit of ride through the Florida 



ST. AUGUSTINE. 209 

woods is such a never-ceasing source of interest 
and pleasure, that we do not mind the slowness 
of :t, and should regret being whisked by at 
steam-speed. We have come over it three 
times ; and each time the varieties of shrubs and 
flowers, grasses and curious leaves, were a 
never-failing study and delight. Long reaches 
of green moist land form perfect flower-gardens, 
whose variety of bloom changes with every 
month. The woods hang full of beautiful climb- 
ing plants. The coral honeysuckle and the red 
bignonia were in season now. Through glimpses 
and openings here and there we could see into 
forests of wild orange-trees ; and palmetto-palms 
raised their scaly trunks and gigantic green 
fans. The passengers could not help admiring 
the flowers : and as there were many stops and 
pauses, and as the gait of the horses was never 
rapid, it was quite easy for the gentlemen to 
gather and bring in specimens of all the beau- 
14 



2 1 PALME TTO-LEA VES. 

ties ; and the flowers formed the main staple of 
the conversation. They were so very bright 
and gay and varied, that even the most unob- 
serving could not but notice them. 

St. Augustine stands on a flat, sandy level, 
encompassed for miles and miles by what is 
called " scrub," — a mixture of low palmettoes 
and bushes of various descriptions. Its history 
carries one back almost to the middle ages. 
For instance, Menendez, who figured as com- 
mandant in its early day, was afterwards ap- 
pointed to command the Spanish Armada, away 
back in the times of Queen Elizabeth ; but, 
owing to the state of his health, he did not ac- 
cept the position. 

In the year 1586, Elizabeth then being at war 
with Spain, her admiral, Sir Francis Drake, 
bombarded St. Augustine, and took it ; helping 
himself, among other things, to seven brass can- 
non, two thousand pounds in money, and other 



ST. A UG US TINE. 2 1 1 

booty. In 1605 it was taken and plundered by 
buccaneers; in 1702, besieged by the people of 
the Carolinas ; in 1740, besieged again by Gen. 
Oglethorpe of Georgia. 

So we see that this part of our country, at 
least, does not lie open to the imputation so 
often cast upon America, of having no historic 
associations ; though, like a great deal of the 
world's history, it is written in letters of blood 
and fire. 

Whoever would know, let him read Park- 
man's " Pioneers of France," under the article 
" Huguenots in Florida," and he will see how 
the first Spanish governor, Menendez, thought 
he did God service when he butchered in cold 
blood hundreds of starving, shipwrecked Hu- 
guenots who threw themselves on his mercy, 
and to whom he had extended pledges of shelter 
and protection. 

A government-officer, whose ship is stationed 



2 1 2 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

in Matanzas Inlet, told me that the tradition is 
that the place is still haunted by the unquiet 
ghosts of the dead. An old negro came to him, 
earnestly declaring that he had heard often, at 
midnight, shrieks and moans, and sounds as of 
expostulation, and earnest cries in some foreign 
language, at that place ; and that several white 
people whom he had taken to the spot had 
heard the same. On inquiring of his men, 

Capt. H could find none who had heard the 

noises ; although, in digging in the sands, human 
bones were often disinterred. But surely, by all 
laws of demonology, here is where there ought 
to be the materials for a first-class ghost-story. 
Here, where there has been such crime, 
cruelty, treachery, terror, fear, and agony, we 
might fancy mourning shades wandering in 
unrest, — shades of the murderers, forever de- 
ploring their crime and cruelty. 

The aspect of St. Augustine is quaint and 



ST. AUGUSTINE. 21 3 

Strange, in harmony with its romantic history. 
It has no pretensions to architectural richness 
or beauty ; and yet it is impressive from its un- 
Hkeness to any thing else in America. It is as 
if some little, old, dead-and-alive Spanish town, 
with its fort and gateway and Moorish bell- 
towers, had broken loose, floated over here, 
and got stranded on a sand-bank. Here you 
see the shovel-hats and black gowns of priests ; 
the convent, with gliding figures of nuns ; and 
in the narrow, crooked streets meet dark-browed 
people with great Spanish eyes and coal-black 
hair. The current of life here has the indolent, 
dreamy stillness that characterizes life in Old 
Spain. In Spain, when you ask a man to do 
any thing, instead of answering as we do, " In 
a minute," the invariable reply is, " In an hour ; " 
and the growth and progress of St. Augustine 
have been according. There it stands, alone, 
isolated, connected by no good roads or naviga- 



214 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

tion with the busy, Hving world. Before 1835 
St. Augustine was a bower of orange-trees. 
Almost every house looked forth from these en- 
circling shades. The frost came and withered 
all ; and in very few cases did it seem to come 
into the heads of the inhabitants to try again. 
The orange-groves are now the exception, not 
the rule ; and yet for thirty years it has been 
quite possible to have them. 

As the only seaport city of any size in 
Florida, St. Augustine has many attractions. 
Those who must choose a Southern home, and 
who are so situated that they must remain 
through the whole summer in the home of their 
choice, could not do better than to choose St. 
Augustine. It is comparatively free from mala- 
rial fevers ; and the sea-air tempers the oppres- 
sive heats of summer, so that they are quite 
endurable. Sea-bathing can be practised in 
suitable bathing-houses ; but the sharks make 



ST. AUGUSTINE. 21 5 

open sea-bathing dangerous. If one comes ex- 
pecting a fine view of the open ocean, however, 
one will be disappointed; for Anastasia Island — 
a long, low sand-bar — stretches its barren line 
across the whole view, giving only so much sea- 
prospect as can be afforded by the arm of the 
sea — about two miles wide — which washes the 
town. Little as this may seem of the ocean, 
the town lies so flat and low, that, in stormy 
weather, the waves used to be driven up into it, 
so as to threaten its destruction. A sea-wall of 
solid granite masonry was deemed necessary to 
secure its safety, and has been erected by the 
United-States Government. This wall affords a 
favorite promenade to the inhabitants, who there 
enjoy good footing and sea-breezes. 

What much interested us in St. Augustine 
was to see the results of such wealth and care 
as are expended at the North on gardening 
being brought to bear upon gardens in this 



2l6 PALMETTO-LEAVES. 

semi-tropical region. As yet, all that we have 
seen in Florida has been the beginning of in- 
dustrial experiments, where utility has been the 
only thing consulted, and where there has been 
neither time nor money to seek the ornamental. 
Along the St. John's you can see, to-day, hun- 
dreds of places torn from the forest, yet show- 
ing the unrotted stumps of the trees ; the house 
standing in a glare of loose white sand, in 
which one sinks over shoes at every step. If 
there be a flower-garden (and, wherever there is 
a woman, there will be), its prospects in the loose 
sliding sands appear discouraging. Boards and 
brick-edgings are necessary to make any kind 
of boundaries ; and a man who has to cut down a 
forest, dig a well, build a house, plant an orange- 
grove, and meanwhile raise enough garden-stuff 
to pay his way, has small time for the graces. 

But here in St. Augustine are some families 
of wealth and leisure, driven to seek such a 



ST. AUGUSTINE. 2iy 

winter-home, who amuse themselves during their 
stay in making that home charming ; and the 
results are encouraging. 

In the first place, the slippery sand-spirit has 
been caught, and confined under green grass- 
plats. The grass problem has been an earnest 
study with us ever since we came here. What 
grass will bear a steady blaze of the sun for six 
months, with the thermometer at a hundred 
and thirty or forty, is a question. It is perfectly 
easy, as we have proved by experiment, to raise 
flattering grass-plats of white clover, and even 
of the red-top, during the cool, charming 
months of January, February, and March ; but 
their history will be summed up in the scriptu- 
ral account — " which to day is, and to-morrow 
is cast into the oven " — as soon as May begins. 

The chances of an enduring sod for ornament- 
al purposes are confined to two varieties, — the 
broad and the narrow leafed Bermuda grasses. 



Z 1 8 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

These have roots that run either to the centre 
of the earth, or far enough in that direction for 
practical purposes ; and are, besides, endowed 
with the faculty of throwing out roots at every 
joint, so that they spread rapidly. The broad- 
leafed kind is what is principally employed in 
St. Augustine ; and we have seen beautifully- 
kept gardens where it is cut into borders, and 
where the grass-plats and croquet-grounds 
have been made of it to admirable advantage. 
A surface of green in this climate is doubly 
precious to the eye. 

We were visiting in a house which is a model 
for a hot climate. A wide, cool hall runs 
through the centre ; and wide verandas, both 
above and below, go around the whole four 
sides. From these we could look down at our 
leisure into the foliage of a row of Magnolia 
grandiflora, now in blossom. Ivy, honey- 
suckles, manrundia, and a host of other 



ST. AUGUSTINE. 219 

climbing - plants, make a bower of these out- 
side corridors of the house. The calla-liHes 
blossom almost daily in shaded spots ; and beds 
of fragrant blue violets are never without 
flowers. Among the ornamental shrubbery we 
noticed the chaparral, — a thorny tree, with 
clusters of yellow blossoms, and long, drooping 
pecuHar leaves, resembling in effect the willow- 
leafed acacia. The banana has a value simply 
as an ornamental-leaf plant, quite apart from the 
consideration of its fruit, which one can buy, per- 
haps, better than one can raise, in this part of 
Florida; but it is glorious, when the thermometer 
is going up into the hundreds, to see the great, 
fresh, broad, cool leaves of the banana-tree leap- 
ing into life, and seeming to joy in existence. In 
groups of different sizes, they form most beauti- 
ful and effective shrubbery. The secret of 
gardening well here is to get things that love 
the sun. Plants that come originally from hot 



220 PALMETTO-LEAVES. 

regions, and that rejoice the hotter it grows, are 
those to be sought for. The date-palm has 
many beautiful specimens in the gardens of St. 
Augustine. A date-palm, at near view, is as 
quaint and peculiar a specimen of Nature as one 
can imagine. Its trunk seems built up of great 
scales, in which ferns and vines root themselves, 
and twine and ramble, and hang in festoons. 
Above, the leaves, thirty feet long, fall in a 
feathery arch, and in the centre, like the waters 
of a fountain, shoot up bright, yellow, drooping 
branches that look like coral. These are the 
flower-stalks. The fruit, in this climate, does not 
ripen so as to be good for any thing. 

One gentleman showed me a young palm, 
now six feet high, which he had raised from a 
seed of the common shop date, planted four 
years ago. In this same garden he showed me 
enormous rose-trees, which he had formed by 
budding the finest of the Bourbon ever-bloom- 



ST. AUGUSTINE. 221 

ing roses in the native Florida rose. The 
growth in three years had been incredible ; and 
these trees are an ever-springing fountain of 
fresh roses. There is a rose-tree in St. Augus- 
tine, in a little garden, which all the sight-seers 
go to see. It is a tree with a trunk about the 
size of an ordinary man's arm, and is said to 
have had a thousand roses on it at a time. Half 
that number will answer our purpose ; and we 
will set it down at that. Rose-slugs and rose- 
bugs are pests unheard of here. The rose 
grows as in its native home. One very pretty 
feature of the houses here struck me agreeably. 
There is oftentimes a sort of shaded walk under 
half the house, opening upon the garden. You 
go up a dusty street, and stand at a door, which 
you expect will open into a hall It opens, 
and a garden full of flowers and trees meets 
your view. The surprise is delightful. In one 
garden that we visited we saw a century-plant 



222 PALME TTO-LEA VES. 

in bud. The stalk was nineteen feet high ; and 
the blossoms seemed to promise to be simi- 
lar to those of the yucca. The leaves are Hke 
the aloe, only longer, and twisted and contorted 
in a strange, weird fashion. On the whole, it 
looked as if it might have been one of the 
strange plants in Rappicini's garden in Padua. 

The society in St. Augustine, though not 
extensive, is very delightful. We met and were 
introduced to some very cultivated, agreeable 
people. There is a fair prospect that the city 
will soon be united by railroad to Jacksonville, 
which will greatly add to the facility and con- 
venience of living there. We recrossed the 
railroad at Tekoi, on our way home, in company 
with a party of gentlemen who are investigating 
that road with a view of putting capital into it, 
and so getting it into active running order. 
One of them informed me that he was also 
going to Indian River to explore, in view of the 



ST. AUGUSTINE. 223 



projected plan to unite it with the St. John's by 
means of a canal. Very sensibly he remarked, 
that, in order to really make up one's mind about 
Florida, one should see it in summer ; to which 
we heartily assented. 

By all these means this beautiful country is 
being laid open, and made accessible and inhabit- 
able as a home and refuge for those who need it. 

On the steamboat, coming back, we met the 
Florida Thoreau of whom we before spoke, — 
a devoted, enthusiastic lover of Nature as she 
reveals herself in the most secluded everglades 
and forests. He supports himself, and pays the 
expenses of his tours, by selling the curiosities 
of Nature which he obtains to the crowd of 
eager visitors who throng the hotels in winter. 
The feathers of the pink curlew, the heron, the 
crane, the teeth of alligators, the skins of deer, 
panther, and wild-cat, are among his trophies. 
He asserted with vehemence that there were 



224 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

varieties of birds in Florida unknown as yet to 
any collection of natural history. He excited 
us greatly by speaking of a pair of pet pink 
curlews which had been tamed ; also of a snow- 
white stork, with sky-blue epaulet on each 
shoulder, which is to be found in the everglades. 
He was going to spend the whole summer alone 
in these regions, or only with Indian guides ; 
and seemed cheerful and enthusiastic. He 
should find plenty of cocoanuts, and would 
never need to have a fever if he would eat daily 
of the wild oranges which abound. If one only 
could go in spirit, and not in flesh, one would 
like to follow him into the everglades. The 
tropical forests of Florida- contain visions and 
wonders of growth and glory never yet revealed 
to the eye of the common traveller, and which 
he who sees must risk much to explore. Our 
best wishes go with our enthusiast. May he 
live to tell us what he sees ! 





OUR NEIGHBOR OVER THE WAY. 

Mandarin, May 14, 1872. 

UR neighbor over the way is not, to 



be sure, quite so near or so observa- 
ble as if one lived on Fifth Avenue 
or Broadway. 

Between us and his cottage lie five good miles 
of molten silver in the shape of the St. John's 
River, outspread this morning in all its quivering 
sheen, glancing, dimpling, and sparkling, dot- 
's 225 



226 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

ted with sail-boats, and occasionally ploughed 
by steamboats gliding like white swans back 
and forth across the distance. 

Far over on the other side, where the wooded 
shores melt into pearly blue outlines, gleams out 
in the morning sun a white, glimmering spot 
about as big as a ninepence, which shows us 
where his cottage stands. Thither we are going 
to make a morning visit. Our water-coach is 
now approaching the little wharf front of our 
house : and we sally forth equipped with our sun- 
umbrellas ; for the middle of May here is like 
the middle of August at the North. The water- 
coach, or rather omnibus, is a little thimble of a 
steamer, built for pleasuring on the St. John's, 
called "The Mary Draper." She is a tiny 
shell of a thing, but with a nice, pretty cabin, 
and capable of carrying comfortably thirty or 
forty passengers. During the height of the trav- 
elling-season " The Mary Draper " is let out to 



OUR NEIGHBOR OVER THE WAY. 227 

parties of tourists, who choose thus at their leisure 
to explore the river, sailing, landing, rambling, 
exploring, hunting, fishing, and perhaps inevi- 
tably flirting among the flowery nooks and pal- 
metto-hammocks of the shore. We have seen 
her many a time coming gayly back from an ex- 
cursion, with the voice of singing, and laugh of 
youths and maidens, resounding from her deck, 
flower-wreathed and flower-laden like some 
fabled bark from the fairy isles. But now, in 
the middle of May, the tourists are few ; and so 
" The Mary Draper " has been turned into a sort 
of errand-boat, plying up and down the river to 
serve the needs and convenience of the perma- 
nent inhabitants. A flag shown upon our wharf 
brings her in at our need ; and we step gayly on 
board, to be carried across to our neighbors. 

We take our seats at the shaded end of the 
boat, and watch the retreating shore, with its 
gigantic live-oaks rising like a dome above the 



228 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

orange-orchards, its clouds of pink oleander- 
trees that seem every week to blossom fuller 
than the last ; and for a little moment we can 
catch the snow-white glimmer of the great Cape 
jessamine-shrub that bends beneath the weight 
of flowers at the end of our veranda. Our little 
cottage looks like a rabbit's nest beside the 
monster oaks that shade it ; but it is cosey to see 
them all out on the low veranda, — the Professor 
with his newspapers, the ladies with their 
worsteds and baskets, in fact the whole of our 
large family, — all reading, writing, working, in 
the shady covert of the orange-trees. 

From time to time a handkerchief is waved 
on their part, and the signal returned on ours ; 
and they follow our receding motions with a spy- 
glass. Our life is so still and lonely here, that 
even so small an event as our crossing the river 
for a visit is all-absorbing. 

But, after a little, our craft melts off into the 



OUR NEIGHBOR OVER THE WAY. 229 

distance, " The Mary Draper" looks to our friends 
no larger than a hazel-nut, and the trees of the 
other side loom up strong and tall in our eyes, 
and grow clearer and clearer ; while our home, 
with its great live-oaks and its orange-groves, 
has all melted into a soft woolly haze of distance. 
Our next neighbor's great whitewashed barn is 
the only sign of habitation remaining ; and that 
flashes out a mere shining speck in the distance. 

Now the boat comes up to Mr. 's wharf; 

and he is there to meet and welcome us. 

One essential to every country-house on the 
St. John's is this accessory of a wharf and boat- 
house. The river is, for a greater or less dis- 
tance from the shore, too shallow to admit the 
approach of steamboats ; and wharves of fifty 
or a hundred feet in length are needed to enable 
passengers to land. 

The bottom of the river is of hard, sparkling 
white sand, into which spiles are easily driven ; 



230 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

and the building and keeping-up of such a wharf 
is a trifling trouble and expense in a land where 
lumber is so plentiful. 

Our friend Mr. is, like many other old 

Floridian residents, originally from the North. 
In early youth he came to Florida a condemned 
and doomed consumptive, recovered his health, 
and has lived a long and happy life here, and 
acquired a handsome property. 

He owns extensive tracts of rich and beautiful 
land on the west bank of the St. John's, between 
it and Jacksonville, destined, as that city grows 
and extends, to become of increasing value. 
His wife, like himself originally of Northern 
origin, has become perfectly acclimated and nat- 
uralized by years' residence at the South ; and is, 
to all intents and purposes, a Southern woman. 
They live all the year upon their place ; those 
who formerly were their slaves settled peaceably 
around them as free laborers, still looking up 



OUR NEIGHBOR OVER THE WAY. 23 1 

to them for advice, depending on them for aid, 
and rendering to them the willing, well-paid ser- 
vices of freemen. 

Their house is a simple white cottage, sit- 
uated so as to command a noble view of the 
river. A long avenue of young live-oak-trees 
leads up from the river to the house. The 
ground is covered with a smooth, even turf of 
Bermuda grass, — the only kind that will endure 
the burning glare of the tropical summer. The 
walls of the house are covered with roses, now 
in full bloom. La Marque, cloth-of-gold, and 
many another kind, throw out their splendid 
clusters, and fill the air with fragrance. We 

find Mrs. and her family on the veranda, — 

the usual reception-room in a Southern house. 
The house is the seat of hospitality ; every room 
in it sure to be full, if not with the members of 
the family proper, then with guests from Jack- 
sonville, who find, in this high, breezy situation, 
a charming retreat from the heat of the city. 



232 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

One feature is characteristic of Southern 
houses, so far as we have seen. The ladies are 
enthusiastic plant-lovers ; and the veranda is 
lined round with an array of boxes in which gar- 
dening experiments are carried on. Rare plants, 
slips, choice seedlings, are here nurtured and 
cared for. In fact, the burning power of the 
tropical sun, and the scalding, fine white sand, is 
such, that to put a tender plant or slip into it 
seems, in the words of Scripture, like casting it 
into the oven ; and so there is everywhere more 
or less of this box-gardening. 

The cottage was all in summer array ; the 
carpets taken up and packed away, leaving the 
smooth, yellow pine floors clean and cool as 
the French parquets. 

The plan of the cottage is the very common 
one of Southern houses. A wide, clear hall, fur- 
nished as a sitting-room, opening on a veranda 
on either end, goes through the house ; and all 



OUR NEIGHBOR OVER THE WAY. 233 

the other rooms open upon it. We sat chatting, 
first on the veranda ; and, as the sun grew hot- 
ter, retreated inward to the hall, and discussed 
flowers, farm, and dairy. 

On the east bank of the St. John's, where our 
own residence is, immediately around Mandarin, 
the pasturage is poor, and the cattle diminutive 
and half starved. Knowing that our neighbor 
was an old resident, and enthusiastic stock-raiser 
and breeder, we came to him for knowledge on 
these subjects. Stock-breeding has received a 
great share of attention from the larger planters 
of Florida. The small breed of wild native 
Florida cattle has been crossed and improved by 
foreign stock imported • at great expense. The 
Brahmin cattle of India, as coming from a tropical 
region, were thought specially adapted to the 
Floridian climate, and have thriven well here. 
By crossing these with the Durham and Ayr- 
shire and the native cattle, fine varieties of ani- 



234 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

mals have been obtained. Mr. showed me 

a Hst of fifty of his finest cows, each one of which 
has its distinguishing name, and with whose 
pedigree and pecuUarities he seemed well ac- 
quainted. 

In rearing, the Floridian system has always 
been to make every thing subservient to the in- 
crease of the herd. The calf is allowed to run 
with the cow ; and the supply of milk for the 
human being is only what is over and above the 
wants of the calf The usual mode of milking is 
to leave the calf sucking on one side, while the 
milker sits on the other, and gets his portion. 
It is an opinion fixed as fate in the mind of 
every negro cow-tender, that to kill a calf would 
be the death of the mother ; and that, if you sep- 
arate the calf from the mother, her milk will dry 
up. Fresh veal is a delicacy unheard of; and 
once, when we suggested a veal-pie to a strapping 
Ethiopian dairy-woman, she appeared as much 



OUR NEIGHBOR OVER THE WAY, 235 

shocked as if we had proposed to fricassee a baby. 

Mr. , however, expressed his conviction that 

the Northern method of taking off the calf, and 
securing the cow's milk, could be practised 
with success, and had been in one or two cases. 
The yield of milk of some of the best blood cows 
was quite equal to that of Northern milkers, and 
might be kept up by good feeding. As a rule, 
however, stock-raisers depend for their supply 
of milk more on the number of their herd than 
the quantity given by each. The expenses of 
raising are not heavy where there is a wide ex- 
panse of good pasture-land for them to range in, 
and no necessity for shelters of any kind through 
the year. 

Mr. spoke of the river-grass as being a 

real and valuable species of pasturage. On the 
west side of the river, the flats and shallows 
along by the shore are covered with a broad- 
leaved water-grass, very tender and nutritious, of 



236 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

which cattle are very fond. It is a curious sight 
to see whole herds of cows browsing in the 
water, as one may do every day along the course 
of this river. 

The subject of dairy-keeping came up ; 

and, at our request, Mrs. led the way to 

hers. It is built out under a dense shade 
of trees in an airy situation, with double walls 
like an ice-house. The sight of the snowy 
shelves set round with pans, on which a rich 
golden cream was forming, was a sufficient tes- 
timony that there could be beautiful, well-kept 
dairies in Florida, notwithstanding its tropical 
heats. 

The butter is made every morning at an early 
hour ; and we had an opportunity of tasting it 
at the dinner-table. Like the best butter of 
France and England, it is sweet and pure, like 
solidified cream, and as different as can be from 
the hard, salty mass which most generally passes 



OUR NEIGHBOR OVER THE WAY. 237 

for butter among us. The buttermilk of a daily 
churning is also sweet and rich, a delicious 
nourishing drink, and an excellent adjuvant in 
the making of various cakes and other household 
delicacies. 

Our friend's experience satisfied us that there 
was no earthly reason in the climate or surround- 
ings of Florida why milk and butter should be 
the scarce and expensive luxuries they are now. 
What one private gentleman can do simply for 
his own comfort and that of his family, we should 
think might be repeated on a larger scale by 
somebody in the neighborhood of Jacksonville as 
a money speculation. Along the western bank 
of this river are hundreds of tracts of good graz- 
ing land, where cattle might be pastured at small 
expense ; where the products of a dairy on a large 
scale would meet a ready and certain sale. At 
present the hotels and boarding-houses are sup- 
plied with condensed milk, and butter, imported 



238 PALMETTO-LEA VES, 

from the North : and yet land is cheap here ; 
labor is reasonable ; the climate genial, requiring , 
no outlay for shelter, and comparatively little 
necessity of storing food for winter. Fine breeds 
of animals of improved stock exist already, and 
can be indefinitely increased ; and we wonder 
that nobody is to be found to improve the op- 
portunity to run a stock and dairy farm which 
shall supply the hotels and boarding-houses of 
Jacksonville. 

After visiting the dairy, we sauntered about, 
looking at the poultry-yards, where different 
breeds of hens, turkeys, pea-fowl, had each their 
allotted station. Four or five big dogs, hounds 
and pointers, trotted round with us, or rollicked 
with a party of grandchildren, assisted by the 
never-failing addition of a band of giggling little 
negroes As in the old times, the servants of the 
family have their little houses back of the prem- 
ises ; and the laundry-work, &c., is carried on 



OUR NEIGHBOR OVER THE WAY. 239 

outside. The propensity at the South is to mul- 
tiply little buildings. At the North, where there 
is a winter to be calculated on, the tactics of 
living are different. The effort is to gather all 
the needs and wants of life under one roof, to be 
warmed and kept in order at small expense. In 
the South, where building-material is cheap, and 
building is a slight matter, there is a separate 
little building for every thing; and the back 
part of an estate looks like an eruption of little 
houses. There is a milk-house, a corn-house, a 
tool-house, a bake-house, besides a house for each 
of the leading servants, making quite a village. 

Our dinner was a bountiful display of the luxu- 
ries of a Southern farm, — finely-flavored fowl 
choicely cooked, fish from the river, soft-shell 
turtle-soup, with such a tempting variety of early 
vegetables as seemed to make it impossible to 

do justice to all. Mrs. offered us a fine 

sparkling wine made of the juice of the wild- 



240 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

orange. In color it resembled the finest sherry 
and was much like it in flavor. 

We could not help thinking, as we refused 
dainty after dainty, from mere inability to take 
more, of the thoughtless way in which it is often 
said that there can be nothing fit to eat got in 
Florida. 

Mr. 's family is supplied with food almost 

entirely from the products of his own farm. 
He has the nicest of fed beef, nice tender 
pork, poultry of all sorts, besides the resources 
of an ample, well-kept dairy. He raises and 
makes his own sirup. He has sweet-potatoes, 
corn, and all Northern vegetables, in perfection ; 
peaches, grapes of finest quality, besides the 
strictly tropical fruits ; and all that he has, any 
other farmer might also have with the same 
care. 

After dinner we walked out to look at the 
grapes, which hung in profuse clusters, just 



OUR NEIGHBOR OVER THE WAY, 24 1 

beginning to ripen on the vines. On our way 
we stopped to admire a great bitter-sweet 
orange-tree, which seemed to make " Hesperian 
fables true." It was about thirty feet in height, 
and with branches that drooped to the ground, 
weighed down at the same time with great 
golden balls of fruit, and wreaths of pearly buds 
and blossoms. Every stage of fruit, from the 
tiny green ball of a month's growth to the per- 
fected orange, were here ; all the processes of 
life going on together in joyous unity. The tree 
exemplified what an orange-tree could become 
when fully fed, when its almost boundless capa- 
city for digesting nutriment meets a full supply ; 
and it certainly stood one of the most royal of 
trees. Its leaves were large, broad, and of that 
glossy, varnished green peculiar to the orange ; 
and its young shoots looked like burnished gold. 
The bitter-sweet orange is much prized by some. 
The pulp is sweet, with a certain spicy flavor ; but 
16 



242 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

the rind, and all the inner membranes that con- 
tain the fruit, are bitter as quinine itself. It is 
held to be healthy to eat of both, as the acid 
and the bitter are held to be alike correctives 
of the bilious tendencies of the climate. 

But the afternoon sun was casting the shad- 
ows the other way, and the little buzzing " Mary 
Draper" was seen puffing in the distance on hei 
way back from Jacksonville ; and we walked 
leisurely down the live-oak avenues to the wharf, 
our hands full of roses and Oriental jessamine, 
and many pleasant memories of our neighbors 
over the way. 

And now in relation to the general subject of 
farming in Florida. Our own region east of the 
St. John's River is properly a little sandy belt 
of land, about eighteen miles wide, washed by 
the Atlantic Ocean on one side, and the St. 
John's River on the other. It is not by any 
means so well adapted to stock-farming or 



OUR NEIGHBOR OVER THE WAY. 243 

general farming as the western side of the river. 
Its principal value is in fruit-farming ; and it will 
appear, by a voyage up the river, that all the 
finest old orange-groves and all the new orange- 
plantations are on the eastern side of the rivei. 

The presence, on either side, of two great 
bodies of water, produces a more moist and 
equable climate, and less liability to frosts. In 
the great freeze of 1835, the orange-groves of 
the west bank were killed beyond recovery; 
while the fine groves of Mandarin sprang up 
again from the root, and have been vigorous 
bearers for years since. 

But opposite Mandarin, along the western 
shore, lie miles and miles of splendid land — 
which in the olden time produced cotton of the 
finest quality, sugar, rice, sweet-potatoes — now 
growing back into forest with a tropical rapidity. 
The land lies high, and affords fine sites for dwell- 
ings ; and the region is comparatively healthy. 



244 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

Then Hibernia, Magnolia, and Green Cove, on 
the one side, and Jacksonville on the other, show 
perfect assemblages of boarding-houses and 
hotels, where ready market might be found for 
what good farmers might raise. A colony of 
farmers coming out and settling here together, 
bringing with them church and schoolhouse, 
with a minister skilled like St. Bernard both in 
husbandry and divinity, might soon create a 
thrifty farming-village. We will close this chap- 
ter with an extract from a letter of a Northern 
emigrant recently settled at Newport, on the 
north part of Appalachicola Bay. 

Sept. 22, 1872. 
I have been haying this month : in fact I had 
mowed my orange-grove, a square of two acres, 
from time to time, all summer. But this month 
a field of two acres had a heavy burden of 
grass, with cow-pease intermixed. In some 
parts of the field, there certainly would be at the 



OUR NEIGHBOR OVER THE WAY. 245 

rate of three tons to the acre. The whole field 
would average one ton to the acre. So I went 
at it with a good Northern scythe, and mowed 
every morning an hour or two. The hay was 
perfectly cured by five, p.m., same day, and put 
in barn. The land, being in ridges, made mow- 
ing difficult. Next year I mean to lay that land 
down to grass, taking out stumps, and making 
smooth, sowing rye and clover. I shall plough 
it now as -soon as the hay is all made, and sow 
the rye and clover immediately. I have five 
cows that give milk, and four that should come 
in soon. These, with their calves, I shall feed 
through the months when the grass is poor. I 
have also a yoke of oxen and four young steers, 
with Trim the mule. I have already in the barn 
three to four tons of hay and corn-fodder, and two 
acres of cow-pease cured, to be used as hay. I 
hope to have five hundred bushels of sweet-pota- 
toes, which, for stock, are equal to corn. I made 



246 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

a hundred and ten bushels of corn, twenty-five 
to the acre. My cane is doing moderately well. 
Hope to have all the seed I want to plant four- 
teen acres next year. Bananas thrive beauti- 
fully ; shall have fifty offsets to set out this 
winter ; also three or four thousand oranges, 
all large-sized and fair. 

All these facts go to show, that, while Florida 
cannot compete with the Northern and Western 
States as a grass-raising State, yet there are 
other advantages in her climate and productions 
which make stock-farming feasible and prof- 
itable. The disadvantages of her burning 
climate may, to a degree, be evaded and over- 
come by the application of the same patient 
industry and ingenuity which rendered fruitful 
the iron soil and freezing climate of the New- 
England States. 




THE GRAND TOUR UP RIVER. 




HE St. John's is the grand water- 
highway through some of the most 
beautiful portions of Florida ; and 
tourists, safely seated at ease on the decks of 
steamers, can penetrate into the mysteries and 
wonders of unbroken tropical forests. 

During the " season," boats continually run 
from Jacksonville to Enterprise, and back again ; 
the round trip being made for a moderate sum, 

247 



248 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

and giving, in a very easy and comparatively 
inexpensive manner, as much of the pecuhar 
scenery as mere tourists care to see. On re- 
turning, a digression is often made at Tekoi, 
where passengers cross a horse-railroad of fifteen 
miles to St. Augustine ; thus rendering their 
survey of East Florida more complete. In fact, 
what may be seen and known of the State in 
such a trip is about all that the majority of 
tourists see and know. 

The great majority also perform this trip, and 
see this region, in the dead of winter, when cer- 
tainly one-half of the glorious forests upon the 
shore are bare of leaves. 

It is true that the great number of evergreen- 
trees here make the shores at all times quite 
different from those of a Northern climate ; yet 
the difference between spring and winter is as 
great here as there. 

Our party were resolute in declining all invi- 



THE GRAND TOUR UP RIVER. 249 

tations to join parties in January, February, and 
March ; being determined to wait till the new 
spring foliage was in its glory. 

When the magnolia-flowers were beginning 
to blossom, we were ready, and took passage — 
a joyous party of eight or ten individuals — on 
the steamer " Darlington," commanded by Capt. 
Broch, and, as is often asserted, by ** Commodore 
Rose.'" 

This latter, in this day of woman's rights, is 
no mean example of female energy and vigon 
She is stewardess of the boat, and magnifies her 
office. She is a colored woman, once a slave 
owned by Capt. Broch, but emancipated, as the 
story goes, for her courage, and presence of mind, 
in saving his life in a steamboat disaster. 

Rose is short and thick, weighing some two 
or three hundred, with a brown complexion, and a 
pleasing face and fine eyes. Her voice, like that 
of most colored women, is soft, and her manner 



250 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

of speaking pleasing. All this, however, relates 
to her demeanor when making the agreeable to 
passengers. In other circumstances, doubtless, 
she can speak louder, and with considerable more 
emphasis ; and show, in short, those martial attri- 
butes which have won for her the appellation of 
the " Commodore." It is asserted that the whole 
charge of provisioning and running the boat, and 
all its internal arrangements, vests in Madam 
Rose ; and that nobody can get ahead of her in 
a bargain, or resist her will in an arrangement. 

She knows every inch of the river, every house, 
every plantation along shore, its former or 
present occupants and history ; and is always 
ready with an answer to a question. The 
arrangement and keeping of the boat do honor 
to her. Nowhere in Florida does the guest sit 
at a more bountifully-furnished table. Our 
desserts and pastry were really, for the wilder- 
ness, something quite astonishing. 



THE GRAND TOUR UP RIVER. 251 

The St. John's River below Pilatka has few 
distinguishing features to mark it out from 
other great rivers. It is so wide, that the foliage 
of the shores cannot be definitely made out ; 
and the tourist here, expecting his palm-trees 
and his magnolias and flowering-vines, is disap- 
pointed by sailing in what seems a never-ending 
great lake, where the shores are off in the dis- 
tance too far to make out any thing in particular. 
But, after leaving Pilatka, the river grows nar- 
rower, the overhanging banks approach nearer, 
and the foliage becomes more decidedly tropical 
in its character. Our boat, after touching as 
usual at Hibernia, Magnolia, and Green Cove, 
brought up at Pilatka late in the afternoon, made 
but a short stop, and was on her way again. 

It was the first part of May ; and the forests 
were in that fulness of leafy perfection which 
they attain in the month of June at the North. 
But there is a peculiar, vivid brilliancy about the 



252 PALMETTO-LEAVES. 

green of the new spring-leaves here, which we 
never saw elsewhere. It is a brilliancy like 
some of the new French greens, now so much 
in vogue, and reminding one of the metallic 
brightness of birds and insects. In the woods, 
the cypress is a singular and beautiful feature. 
It attains to a great age and immense size. 
The trunk and branches of an old cypress are 
smooth and white as ivory, while its light, feath- 
ery foliage is of the most dazzling golden-green ; 
and rising, as it often does, amid clumps of dark 
varnished evergreens, — bay and magnolia and 
myrtle, — it has a singular and beautiful effect. 
The long swaying draperies of the gray moss 
interpose everywhere their wavering outlines 
and pearl tints amid the brightness and bloom 
of the forest, giving to its deep recesses the 
mystery of grottoes hung with fanciful vegeta- 
ble stalactites. 
The palmetto-tree appears in all stages, — from 



THE GRAND TOUR UP RIVER. 253 

its earliest growth, when it looks like a fountain 
of great, green fan-leaves bursting from the 
earth, to its perfect shape, when, sixty or seventy 
feet in height, it rears its fan crown high in air. 
The oldest trees may be known by a perfectly 
smooth trunk ; all traces of the scaly formation 
by which it has built itself up in ring after ring 
of leaves being obliterated. But younger trees, 
thirty or forty feet in height, often show a 
trunk which seems to present a regular criss- 
cross of basket-work, — the remaining scales 
from whence the old leaves have decayed and 
dropped away. These scaly trunks are often 
full of ferns, wild flowers, and vines, which hang 
in fantastic draperies down their sides, and form 
leafy and flowery pillars. The palmetto-ham- 
mocks, as they are called, are often miles in 
extent along the banks of the rivers. The tops 
of the palms rise up round in the distance as so 
many hay-cocks, and seeming to rise one above 
another far as the eye can reach. 



254 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

We have never been so fortunate as to be 
able to explore one of these palmetto-groves. 
The boat sails with a provoking quickness by 
many a scene that one longs to dwell upon, 
study, and investigate. We have been told, 
however, by hunters, that they afford admirable 
camping-ground, being generally high and dry, 
with a flooring of clean white sand. Their 
broad leaves are a perfect protection from rain 
and dew ; and the effect of the glare of the camp- 
fires and torch-lights on the tall pillars, and wav- 
ing, fan-like canopy overhead, is said to be per- 
fectly magical. The most unromantic and least 
impressible speak of it with enthusiasm. 

In going up the river, darkness overtook us 
shortly after leaving Pilatka. We sat in a 
golden twilight, and saw the shores every 
moment becoming more beautiful ; but when 
the twilight faded, and there was no moon, we 
sought the repose of our cabin. It was sultry 



THE GRAND TOUR UP RIVER. 255 

as August, although only the first part of May ; 
and our younger and sprightlier members, who 
were on the less breezy side of the boat, after 
fruitlessly trying to sleep, arose and dressed 
themselves, and sat all night on deck. 

By this means they saw a sight worth seeing, 
and one which we should have watched all night 
to see. The boat's course at night is through 
narrows of the river, where we could hear the 
crashing and crackling of bushes and trees, and 
sometimes a violent thud, as the boat, in turning 
a winding, struck against the bank. On the 
forward part two great braziers were kept filled 
with blazing, resinous light-wood, to guide the 
pilot in the path of the boat. The effect of this 
glare of red light as the steamer passed through 
the palmetto hummocks and moss-hung grottoes 
of the forest was something that must have 
been indescribably weird and beautiful ; and our 
young friends made us suitably regret that our 



256 PALME TTO-LEA VES, 

more airy sleeping-accommodations had lost us 
this experience. 

In the morning we woke at Enterprise, hav- 
ing come through all the most beautiful and 
characteristic part of the way by night. En- 
terprise is some hundred and thirty miles 
south of our dwelling-place in Mandarin ; and, of 
course, that much nearer the tropical regions. 
We had planned excursions, explorations, pic- 
nics in the woods, and a visit to the beautiful 
spring in the neighborhood ; but learned with 
chagrin that the boat made so short a stay, that 
none of these things were possible. The only 
thing that appears to the naked eye of a steam- 
boat traveller in Enterprise is a large hotel down 
upon the landing, said by those who have tested 
it to be one of the best kept hotels in Florida. 
The aspect of the shore just there is no way pic- 
turesque or inviting, but has more that forlorn, 
ragged, desolate air that new settlements on the 



THE GRAND TOUR UP RIVER, 2S7 

river are apt to have. The wild, untouched 
banks are beautiful ; but the new settlements 
generally succeed in destroying all Nature's 
beauty, and give you only leafless, girdled trees, 
blackened stumps, and naked white sand, in 
return. 

Turning our boat homeward, we sailed in 
clear morning light back through the charming 
scenery which we had slept through the night 
before. It is the most wild, dream-like, enchant- 
ing sail conceivable. The river sometimes nar- 
rows so that the boat brushes under overhang- 
ing branches, and then widens into beautiful lakes 
dotted with wooded islands. Palmetto-hammocks, 
live-oak groves, cypress, pine, bay, and magnolia 
form an interchanging picture ; vines hang fes- 
tooned from tree to tree ; wild flowers tempt the 
eye on the near banks ; and one is constantly 
longing for the boat to delay here or there : but 
on goes her steady course, the pictured scene 

17 



258 PALMETTO-LEAVES. 

around constantly changing. Every now and 
then the woods break away for a little space, 
and one sees orange and banana orchards, and 
houses evidently newly built. At many points 
the boat landed, and put off kegs of nails, hoes, 
ploughs, provisions, groceries. Some few old 
plantations were passed, whose name and his- 
tory seemed familiar to Madam Rose ; but by far 
the greater number were new settlements, with 
orchards of quite young trees, which will require 
three or four more years to bring into bearing. 

The greater number of fruit-orchards and 
settlements were on the eastern shore of the 
river, which, for the reasons we have spoken of, 
is better adapted to the culture of fruit. 

One annoyance on board the boat was the con- 
stant and pertinacious firing kept up by that 
class of men who think that the chief end of 
man is to shoot something. Now, we can put 
up with good earnest hunting or fishing done 



THE GRAND TOUR UP RIVER. 259 

for the purpose of procuring for man food, or 
even the fur and feathers that hit his fancy 
and taste. 

But we detest indiscriminate and purposeless 
maiming and kilHng of happy animals, who have 
but one life to live, and for whom the agony of 
broken bones or torn flesh is a helpless, hope- 
less pain, unrelieved by any of the resources 
which enable us to endure. A parcel of hulking 
fellows sit on the deck of a boat, and pass through 
the sweetest paradise God ever made, without one 
idea of its loveliness, one gentle, sympathizing 
thought of the animal happiness with which the 
Creator has filled these recesses. All the way 
along is a constant fusillade upon every living 
thing that shows itself on the bank. Now a bird 
is hit, and hangs, head downward, with a broken 
wing ; and a coarse laugh choruses the deed. 
Now an alligator is struck ; and the applause 
is greater. We once saw a harmless young 



26o PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

alligator, whose dying struggles, as he threw out 
his poor little black paws piteously like human 
hands, seemed to be vastly diverting to these 
cultivated individuals. They wanted nothing of 
him except to see how he would act when he 
was hit, dying agonies are so very amusing ! 

Now and then these sons of Nimrod in their 
zeal put in peril the nerves, if not lives, of passen- 
gers. One such actually fired at an alligator 
right across a crowd of ladies, many of them in- 
valids ; and persisted in so firing a second time, 
after having been requested to desist. If the 
object were merely to show the skill of the 
marksman, why not practise upon inanimate 
objects } An old log looks much like an alli- 
gator : why not practise on an old log .-* It re- 
quires as much skill to hit a branch, as the bird 
singing on it : why not practise on the branch 1 
But no : it must be something that ejtjoys and 
can suffer ; something that loves life, and must 



THE GRAND TOUR UP RIVER. 261 

lG5e it. Certainly this in an inherent savagery 
difficult to account for. Killing for killing's 
sake belongs not even to the tiger. The tiger 
kills for food ; man, for amusement. 

At evening we were again at Pilatka ; when 
the great question was discussed, Would we, or 
would we not, take the tour up the Okalewaha 
to see the enchanted wonders of the Silver 
Spring ! The Okalewaha boat lay at the landing ; 
and we went to look at it. The Okalewaha is a 
deep, narrow stream, by the by, emptying into 
the St. John's, with a course as crooked as 
Apollo's ram's horn; and a boat has been 
constructed for the express purpose of this pas- 
sage. 

The aspect of this same boat on a hot night 
was not inspiriting. It was low, long, and nar- 
row ; its sides were rubbed glassy smooth, or 
torn and creased by the friction of the bushes and 
trees it had pushed through. It was without glass 



262 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

windows, — which would be of no use in such 
navigation, — and, in place thereof, furnished with 
strong shutters to close the air-holes. We looked 
at this same thing as it lay like a gigantic coffin 
in the twilight, and thought even the Silver 
Spring would not pay for being immured there^ 
and turned away. 

A more inviting project was to step into a 
sail-boat, and be taken in the golden twilight 
over to Col. Harte's orange-grove, which is said 
— with reason, we believe — to be the finest in 
Florida. 

We landed in the twilight in this grove of six 
hundred beautiful orange-trees in as high condi- 
tion as the best culture could make them. The 
well-fed orange-tree is known by the glossy, 
deep green of its foliage, as a declining tree is by 
the yellow tinge of its leaves. These trees looked 
as if each leaf, if broken, would spurt with juice. 
Piles of fish-guano and shell banks, prepared as 



THE GRAND TOUR UP RIVER, 26^ 

top-dress for the orchard, were lying everywhere 
about, mingling not agreeably with the odor of 
orange-blossoms. We thought to ourselves, that, 
if the orange-orchard must be fed upon putrefy- 
ing fish, we should prefer not to have a house 
in it. The employee who has charge of the or- 
chard lives in a densely-shaded cottage in the 
edge of it. A large fruit-house has recently 
been built there ; and the experiments of Col. 
Harte seem to demonstrate, that, even if there 
occur severe frosts in the early winter, there is 
no sort of need, therefore, of losing the orange- 
crop. His agent showed us oranges round and 
fair that had been kept three months in moss 
in this fruit-house, and looking as fresh and 
glossy as those upon the trees. This, if proved 
by experience, always possible, does away with 
the only uncertainty relating to the orange-crop. 
Undoubtedly the fruit is far better to continue 
all winter on the trees, and be gathered from 



264 PALME TTO-LEA VES. 

time to time as wanted, as has always been the 
practice in Florida. But, with fruit-houses and 
moss, it will be possible, in case of a threatened 
fall of temperature, to secure the crop. The 
oranges that come to us from Malaga and 
Sicily are green as grass when gathered and 
packed, and ripen, as much as they do ripen, on 
the voyage over. We should suppose the 
oranges of Florida might be gathered much 
nearer ripe in the fall, ripen in the house or on 
the way, and still be far better than any from 
the foreign market. On this point fruit-grow- 
ers are now instituting experiments, which, we 
trust, will make this delicious crop certain as it 
is abundant. 

Sailing back across the water, we landed, and 
were conveyed to the winter country-seat of a 
Brooklyn gentleman, who is with great enthusi- 
asm cultivating a place there. It was almost 
dark ; and we could only hear of his gardens and 



THE GRAND TOUR UP RIVER. 26$ 

grounds and improvements, not see them. In 
the morning, before the boat left the landing, he 
took us a hasty drive around the streets of the 
little village. It is an unusually pretty, attrac- 
tive - looking place for a Florida settlement. 
One reason for this is, that the streets and 
vacant lots are covered with a fine green turf, 
which, at a distance, looks like our New-England 
grass. It is a mixture of Bermuda grass with a 
variety of herbage, and has just as good gen- 
eral effect as if it were the best red-top. 

There are several fine residences in and around 
Pilatka, — mostly winter-seats of Northern set- 
tlers. The town has eight stores, which do a busi- 
ness for all the surrounding country for miles. It 
has two large hotels, several boarding-houses, 
two churches, two steam saw-mills, and is the 
headquarters for the steamboats of the Upper 
St. John's and its tributaries. Four or five steam- 
ers from different quarters are often stopping 



266 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

at its wharf at a time. " The Dictator " and 
" City Point," from Charleston, run to this place 
outside by the ocean passage, and, entering the 
mouth of the St. John's, stop at Jacksonville 
by the way. The " Nick King " and " Lizzie 
Baker," in like manner, make what is called the 
inside trip, skimming through the network of 
islands that line the coast, and bringing up at the 
same points. Then there are the river-lines 
continually plying between Jacksonville and this 
place, and the small boats that run weekly to 
the Ocklawaha : all these make Pilatka a busy, 
lively, and important place. 

With Pilatka the interest of our return- 
voyage finished. With Green -Cove Spring >, 
Magnolia, Hibernia, at all of which we touched 
on our way back, we were already familiar ; and 
the best sight of all was the cottage under the 
oaks, to which we gladly returned. 




OLD CUDJO AND THE ANGEL 




HE little wharf at Mandarin is a tin}' 
abutment into the great blue sea of 
the St. John's waters, five miles in 
width. The opposite shores gleam out blue 
in the vanishing distance ; and the small wharf 
is built so far out, that one feels there as in 
a boat at sea. Here, trundled down on the 
truck along a descending tram-way, come the 
goods which at this point await shipment on 



2t7 



268 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

some of the many steamboats which ply back 
and forth upon the river ; and here are landed 
by almost every steamer goods and chattels for 
the many families which are hidden in the shad- 
dows of the forests that clothe the river's shore. 
In sight are scarce a dozen houses, all told ; but 
far back, for a radius of ten or fifteen miles, are 
scattered farmhouses whence come tributes of 
produce to this point. Hundreds of barrels of 
oranges, boxes of tomatoes and early vegetables, 
grapes, peaches, and pomegranates, here pause 
on their way to the Jacksonville market. 

One morning, as the Professor and I were en- 
joying our morning stroll on the little wharf, an 
unusual sight met our eye, — a bale of cotton, 
long and large, pressed hard and solid as iron, 
and done up and sewed in a wholly workmanlike, 
manner, that excited our surprise. It was the 
first time since we had been in Mandarin — a 
space of some four or five years — that we had 



OLD CUDJO AND THE ANGEL. 269 

ever seen a bale of cotton on that wharf. Yet 
the whole soil of East Florida is especially 
adapted not only to the raising of cotton, but of 
the peculiar, long staple cotton which commands 
the very highest market-price. But for two or 
three years past the annual ravages of the cot- 
ton-worm had been so discouraging, that the cul- 
ture of cotton had been abandoned in despair. 

Whence, then, had come that most artistic 
bale of cotton, so well pressed, so trim and tidy, 
and got up altogether in so superior a style } 

Standing by it on the wharf was an aged 
negro, misshapen, and almost deformed. He was 
thin and bony, and his head and beard were griz- 
zled with age. He was black as night itself; 
and but for a glittering, intellectual eye, he 
might have been taken for a big baboon, — the 
missing link of Darwin. To him spoke the Pro- 
fessor, giving a punch with his cane upon the 
well-packed, solid bale : — 



2/0 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

" Why, this is splendid cotton ! Where did it 
come from ? Who raised it ? " 

" We raise it, sah, — me 'n' dis yer boy," point- 
ing to a middle-aged black man beside him : 
" we raise it." 

"Where?" 

*' Oh ! out he'yr a piece." 

A lounging white man, never wanting on a 
wharf, here interposed : — 

" Oh ! this is old Cudjo. He lives up Juhng- 
ton. He's an honest old fellow." 

Now, we had heard of this settlement up Juling- 
ton some two or three years before. A party of 
negroes from South Carolina and Georgia had 
been induced to come into Florida, and take up a 
tract of government land. Some white man in 
whom they all put confidence had undertaken for 
them the task of getting their respective allot- 
ments surveyed and entered for them, so that they 
should have a solid basis of land to work upon. 



OLD CUD JO AND THE ANGEL. 2/1 

Here, then, they settled down ; and finding, acci- 
dentally, that a small central lot was not enclosed 
in any of the allotments, they took it as an indica- 
tion that there was to be their church, and accord- 
ingly erected there a prayer-booth, where they 
could hold those weekly prayer-meetings which 
often seem with the negroes to take the place of 
all other recreations. The neighboring farmers 
were not particularly well disposed towards the 
little colony. The native Floridian farmer is a 
quiet, peaceable being, not at all disposed to in- 
fringe the rights of others, and mainly anxious for 
peace and quietness. But they supposed that a 
stampede of negroes from Georgia and Carolina 
meant trouble for them, meant depredations upon 
their cattle and poultry, and regarded it with no 
friendly eye ; yet, nevertheless, they made no 
demonstration against it. Under these circum- 
stances, the new colony had gone to work with un- 
tiring industry. They had built log-cabins and 



2/2 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

barns ; they had split rails, and fenced in theii 
land ; they had planted orange-trees ; they had 
cleared acres of the scrub-palmetto : and any one 
that ever has seen what it is to clear up an acre of 
scrub-palmetto will best appreciate the meaning 
of that toil. Only those black men, with sinews of 
steel and nerves of wire, — men who grow stronger 
and more vigorous under those burning suns that 
wither the white men, — are competent to the 
task. 

But old Cudjo had at last brought his land 
from the wild embrace of the snaky scrub-palmetto 
to the point of bearing a bale of cotton like the 
one on the wharf He had subdued the savage 
earth, brought her under, and made her tributary 
to his will, and demonstrated what the soil of East 
Florida might,, could, and would do, the cotton- 
worm to the contrary notwithstanding. 

And yet this morning he stood by his cotton, 
drooping and dispossessed. The white man that 



OLD CUD JO AND THE ANGEL. 273 

had engaged to take up land for these colonists 
had done his work in such a slovenly, imperfect 
manner, that another settler, a foreigner, had taken 
up a tract which passed right through old Cudjo's 
farm, and taken the land on which he had 
spent four years of hard work, — taken his log- 
cabin and barn and young trees, and the very 
piece that he had just brought to bearing that 
bale of cotton. And there he stood by it, mourn- 
ful and patient. It was only a continuation of 
what he had always experienced, — always op- 
pressed, always robbed and cheated. Old Cudjo 
was making the best of it in trying to ship his 
bale of cotton, which was all that was left of four 
years' toil. 

" What ! " said the Professor to him, " are you 
the old man that has been turned out by that 
foreigner } " 

"Yes, sah ! " he said, his little black eyes kin- 
dling, and quivering from head to foot with ex- 
18 



274 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

citement. "He take ebry t'ing, ebry t'ing, — 
my house I built myself, my fences, and more'n 
t'ree t'ousand rails I split myself: he take 'em 
all ! " 

There is always some bitter spot in a great loss 
that is sorer than the rest Those rails evidently 
cut Cudjo to the heart. The "t'ree t'ousand 
rails " kept coming in in his narrative as the utter 
and unbearable aggravation of injustice. 

" I split 'em myself, sah ; ebry one, t'ree t'ou- 
sand rails ! and he take 'em all ! " 

" And won't he allow you any thing } " 

" No, sah : he won't 'low me not'ing. He say, 
' Get along wid you ! don't know not'ing 'bout 
you ! dis yer land mine.' I tell him, 'You don't 
know old Cudjo ; but de Lord know him : and 
by'm by, when de angel Gabriel come and put 
one foot on de sea, and t'odder on de land, and 
blow de trumpet, he blow once for old Cudjo! 
You mind now ! ' " 



OLD CUDJO AND THE ANGEL. 275 

This was not merely spoken, but acted. The 
old black kindled, and stepped off in pantomime. 
He put, as it were, one foot on the sea, and the 
other on the land ; he raised his cane trumpet- 
wise to his mouth. It was all as vivid as reality 
to him. 

None of the images of the Bible are more fre- 
quent, favorite, and operative among the black 
race than this. You hear it over and over in every 
prayer-meeting. It is sung in wild chorus in 
many a "spiritual." The great angel Gabriel, 
the trumpet, the mighty pomp of a last judg- 
ment, has been the appeal of thousands of 
wronged, crushed, despairing hearts through ages 
of oppression. Faith in God's justice, faith in a 
final triumph of right over wrong, — a practical 
faith, — such had been the attainment of this poor, 
old, deformed black. That and his bale of cotton 
were all he had to show for a life's labor. He had 
learned two things in his world-lesson, — work and 



276 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

faith. He had learned the power of practical in- 
dustry in things possible to man : he had learned 
the sublimer power of faith in God for things im- 
possible. 

Well, of course we were indignant enough about 
poor old Cudjo : but we feared that the distant 
appeal of the angel, and the last trump, was all 
that remained to him ; and, to our lesser faith, 
that seemed a long way to look for justice. 

But redress was nearer than we imagined. Old 
Cudjo's patient industry and honest work 'had 
wrought favor among his white neighbors. He 
had lived down the prejudice with which the settle- 
ment had first been regarded ; for among quiet, 
honest people like the Floridians, it is quite possi- 
ble to live down prejudice. A neighboring justice 
of the peace happened to have an acquaintance in 
Washington from this very district, acquainted 
with all the land and land-titles. He wrote to this 



OLD CUDJO AND THE ANGEL. 2/7 

man an account of the case ; and he interested 
himself for old Cudjo. He went to the land-office 
to investigate the matter. He found, that, in both 
cases, certain formalities necessary to constitute a 
legal entrance had been omitted ; and he fulfilled 
for old Cudjo these formalities, thus settling his 
title; and, moreover, he sent legal papers by 
which the sheriff of the county was enabled to do 
him justice : and so old Cudjo was re-instated in 
his rights. 

The Professor met him, sparkling and jubilant, 
on the wharf once more. 

" Well, Cudjo, ' de angel ' blew for you quicker 
than you expected." 

He laughed all over. " Ye', haw, haw ! Yes, 
massa." Then, with his usual histrionic vigor, he 
acted over the scene. " De sheriff, he come down 
dere. He tell dat man, ' You go right off he'yr. 
Don't you touch none dem rails. Don't you take 
one chip, — not one chip. Don't you take ' — 
Haw, haw, haw ! " Then he added, — 



2/8 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

" He come to me, sah : he say, * Cudjo, what 
you take for your land ? ' He say he gib me two 
hunder dollars. I tell him, * Dat too cheap ; dat 
all too cheap.' He say, ' Cudjo, what will you 
take } ' I say, ' I take ten t'ousand million dol- 
lars ! dat's what I take.' Haw, haw, haw ! " 




THE LABORERS OF THE SOUTH. 




HO shall do the work for us ? is the 
inquiry in this new State, where there 
are marshes to be drained, forests to 
be cut down, palmetto-plains to be grubbed up, 
and all under the torrid heats of a tropical sun. 

" Chinese," say some ; " Swedes," say others ; 
"Germans," others. 

But let us look at the facts before our face and 
eyes. 

279 



280 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

The thermometer, for these three days past, 
has risen over ninety every day. No white 
man that we know of dares stay in the fields 
later than ten o'clock : then he retires under 
shade to take some other and less-exposing 
work. The fine white sand is blistering hot: 
one might fancy that an ^gg would cook, as on 
Mt. Vesuvius, by simply burying it in the sand. 
Yet the black laborers wham we leave in the 
field pursue their toil, if any thing, more ac- 
tively, more cheerfully, than during the cooler 
months. The sun awakes all their vigor and 
all their boundless jollity. When their noon- 
ing time comes, they sit down, not in the shade, 
but in some good hot place in the sand, and 
eat their lunch, and then stretch out, hot and 
comfortable, to take their noon siesta with the 
full glare of the sun upon them. Down in the 
swamp-land near our house we have watched 
old Simon as from hour to hour he drove his 



THE LABORERS OF THE SOUTH. 28 1 

wheelbarrow, heavy with blocks of muck, up a 
steep bank, and deposited it. " Why, Simon ! " we 
say : " how can you work so this hot weather ? " 

The question provokes an explosion of laugh- 
ter. " Yah, hah, ho, ho, ho, misse ! It be hot ; 
dat so : ho, ho, ho ! " 

" How can you work so 1 I can't even think 
how you can do such hard work under such 
a sun." 

" Dat so : ho, ho ! Ladies can't ; no, dey can't, 
bless you, ma'am ! " And Simon trundles off with 
his barrow, chuckling in his might ; comes up with 
another load, throws it down, and chuckles 
again. A little laugh goes a great way with 
Simon ; for a boiling spring of animal content is 
ever welling up within. 

One tremendously hot day, we remember our 
steamer stopping at Fernandina. Owing to the 
state of the tide, the wharf was eight or ten feet 
above the boat ; and the plank made a steep in- 



282 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

clined plane, down which a mountain of multi 
farious freight was to be shipped on our boat. 
A gang of negroes, great, brawny, muscular fel- 
lows, seemed to make a perfect frolic of this job, 
which, under such a sun, would have threatened 
sunstroke to any white man. How they ran and 
shouted and jabbered, and sweated their shirts 
through, as one after another received on their 
shoulders great bags of cotton-seed, or boxes 
and bales, and ran down the steep plane with 
them into the boat ! At last a low, squat giant 
of a fellow, with the limbs and muscles of a great 
dray-horse, placed himself in front of a large 
truck, and made his fellows pile it high with 
cotton-bags ; then, holding back with a prodi- 
gious force, he took the load steadily down the 
steep plane till within a little of the bottom, 
when he dashed suddenly forward, and landed 
it half across the boat. This feat of gigantic 
strength he repeated again and again, running up 



THE LABORERS OF THE SOUTH. 283 

each time apparently as fresh as if nothing had 
happened, shouting, laughing, drinking quarts of 
water, and sweating like a river-god. Never was 
harder work done in a more jolly spirit. 

Now, when one sees such sights as these, one 
may be pardoned for thinking that the negro is 
the natural laborer of tropical regions. He is 
immensely strong ; he thrives and flourishes 
physically under a temperature that exposes 
a white man to disease and death. 

The malarial fevers that bear so hard on the 
white race have far less effect on the negro : 
it is rare that they have what are called here 
the " shakes ; " and they increase and mul- 
tiply, and bear healthy children, in situations 
where the white race deteriorate and grow 
sickly. 

On this point we had an interesting conversa- 
tion with a captain employed in the Government 
Coast Survey. The duties of this survey involve 



284 PALMETTO-LEA VES, 

much hard labor, exposure to the fiercest ex- 
tremes of tropical temperature, and sojourning 
and travelling in swamps and lagoons, often 
most deadly to the white race. For this reason, 
he manned his vessel with a crew composed en- 
tirely of negroes ; and he informed us that the 
result had been perfectly satisfactory. The 
negro constitution enabled them to undergo 
with less suffering and danger the severe ex- 
posure and toils of the enterprise ; and the 
gayety and good nature which belonged to the 
race made their toils seem to sit lighter upon 
them than upon a given number of white men. 
He had known them, after a day of heavy expo- 
sure, travelling through rnud and swamps, and 
cutting saw-grass, which wounds like a knife, to 
sit down at evening, and sing songs and play on 
the banjo, laugh and tell stories, in the very best 
of spirits. He furthermore valued them for their 
docility, and perfect subjection to discipline. 



THE LABORERS OF THE SOUTH. 285 

He announced strict rules, forbidding all drunk- 
enness and profanity ; and he never found a diffi- 
culty in enforcing these rules : their obedience 
and submission were perfect. When this gentle- 
man was laid up with an attack of fever in St. 
Augustine, his room was beset by anxious negro 
mammies, relations of his men, bringing fruits, 
flowers, and delicacies of their compounding for 
" the captain." 

Those who understand and know how to 
treat the negroes seldom have reason to com- 
plain of their ingratitude. 

But it is said, by Northern men who come 
down with Northern habits of labor, that the 
negro is inefficient as a laborer. 

It is to be conceded that the influence of 
climate and constitution, and the past benumb- 
ing influences of slavery, do make the habits of 
Southern laborers very different from the habits 
of Northern men, accustomed, by the shortness 



286 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

of summer and the length of winter, to set the 
utmost value on their working-time. 

In the South, where growth goes on all the 
year round, there really is no need of that in- 
tense, driving energy and vigilance in the use 
of time that are needed in the short summers of 
the North : an equal amount can be done with 
less labor. 

But the Northern man when he first arrives, 
before he has proved the climate, looks with im- 
patient scorn on what seems to him the slow, 
shilly-shally style in which both black and white 
move on. It takes an attack of malarial fever 
or two to teach him that he cannot labor the 
day through under a tropical sun as he can in 
the mountains of New Hampshire. After a 
shake or two of this kind, he comes to be 
thankful if he can hire Cudjo or Pompey to 
plough and hoe in his fields through the blazing 
hours, even though they do not plough and hoe 
with all the alacrity of Northern farmers. 



THE LABORERS OF THE SOUTH. 287 

It is also well understood, that, in taking 
negro laborers, we have to take men and women 
who have been educated under a system the 
very worst possible for making good, efficient, 
careful, or honest laborers. Take any set of 
white men, and put them for two or three gen- 
erations under the same system of work without 
wages, forbid therh legal marriage and secure 
family ties, and we will venture to predict that 
they would come out of the ordeal a much worse 
set than the Southern laborers are. 

We have had in our own personal experience 
pretty large opportunities of observation. Im- 
mediately after the war, two young New-England 
men hired the Mackintosh Plantation, opposite 
to Mandarin, on the west bank of the St. John's 
River. It was, in old times, the model plantation 
of Florida, employing seven hundred negroes, 
raising sug^r, rice, Sea-Island cotton. There 
was upon it a whole village of well-built, com- 



288 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

fortable negro houses, — as well built and com- 
fortable as those of any of the white small farmers 
around. There was a planter's house ; a school- 
house, with chambers for the accommodation of a 
teacher, who was to instruct the planter's chil- 
dren. There were barns, and a cotton-gin 
and storehouse, a sugar-house, a milk and dairy 
house, an oven, and a kitchen ; each separate 
buildings. There were some two or three hun- 
dred acres of cleared land, fit for the raising of 
cotton. This whole estate had been hired by 
these young men on the principle of sharing 
half the profits with the owner. After they had 
carried it on one year, some near relatives be- 
came partners ; and then we were frequent 
visitors there. About thirty laboring families 
were employed upon the place. These were 
from different, more northern States, who had 
drifted downward after the Emancipation Act to 
try the new luxury of being free to choose their 



THE LABORERS OF THE SOUTH. 289 

own situation, and seek their own fortune. 
Some were from Georgia, some from South and 
some from North CaroHna, and some from New 
Orleans ; in fact, the debris of slavery, washed 
together in the tide of emancipation. Such as 
they were, they w^re a fair specimen of the 
Southern negro as slavery had made and left him. 
The system pursued with them was not either 
patronizing or sentimental. The object was to 
put them at once on the ground of free white 
men and women, and to make their labor profit- 
able to their employers. They were taught 
the nature of a contract ; and their agreements 
with their employers were all drawn up in writ- 
ing, and explained to them. The terms were a 
certain monthly sum of money, rations for the 
month, rent of cottage, and privileges of milk 
from the dairy. One of the most efficient and 
intelligent was appointed to be foreman of the 
plantation ; and he performed the work of old 

*9 



290 PALME TTO-LEA VES. 

performed by a driver. He divided the hands 
into gangs ; appointed their places in the field ; 
settled any difficulties between them ; and, in fact, 
was an overseer of the detail. Like all unedu- 
cated people, the negroes are great conservatives. 
They clung to the old ways of working, — to the 
gang, the driver, and the old field arrangements, 
— even where one would have thought another 
course easier and wiser. 

In the dim gray of the morning, Mose blew 
his horn ; and all turned out and worked their 
two or three hours without breakfast, and then 
came back to their cabins to have corn-cake 
made, and pork fried, and breakfast prepared. 
We suggested that the New-England manner 
of an early breakfast would be more to the pur- 
pose ; but were met by the difficulty, nay, almost 
impossibility, of making the negroes work in 
any but the routine to which they had been 
accustomed. But in this routine they worked 



THE LABORERS OF THE SOUTH. 29 1 

honestly, cheerfully, and with a will. They had 
the fruits of their labors constantly in hand, 
in the form either of rations or wages ; and there 
appeared to be much sober content therewith. 

On inquiry, it was found, that, though living in 
all respectability in families, the parties were, 
many of them, not legally married ; and an at- 
tempt was made to induce them to enter into 
holy orders. But the men seemed to regard 
this as the imposing of a yoke beyond what they 
could bear. Mose said he had one wife in 
Virginny, and one in Carliny ; and how did he 
know which of 'em he should like best? Mandy, 
on the female side, objected that she could not 
be married yet for want of a white lace veil, 
which she seemed to consider essential to the 
ceremony. The survey of Mandy in her stuff 
gown and cow-hide boots, with her man's hat 
on, following the mule with the plough, brought 
rather ludicrous emotions in connection with 
this want of a white veil. 



292 PA LME TTO-LEA VES. 

Nevertheless, the legal marriages were few 
among them. They lived faithfully in their re- 
spective family relations ; and they did their 
work, on the whole, effectively and cheerfully. 
Their only amusement, after working all day, 
seemed to be getting together, and holding 
singing and prayer m.eetings, which they often 
did to a late hour of the night. We used to sit 
and hear them, after ten or eleven o'clock, sing- 
ing and praying and exhorting with the greatest 
apparent fervor. There were one or two of 
what are called preachers among them, — men 
with a natural talent for stringing words to- 
gether, and with fine voices. As a matter of 
curiosity, we once sat outside, when one of these 
meetings was going on, to hear what it was like. 

The exhortation seemed to consist in a string 
of solemn-sounding words and phrases, images 
borrowed from Scripture, scraps of hymns, and 
now and then a morsel that seemed like a 



THE LABORERS OF THE SOUTH. 293 

Roman-Catholic tradition about the Virgin 
Mary and Jesus. The most prominent image, 
however, was that of the angel, and the blowing 
of the last trumpet. At intervals, amid the fly- 
ing cloud of images and words, came round 
something about Gabriel and the last trump, some- 
what as follows : " And He will say, ' Gabriel, Ga- 
briel, blow your trump : take it cool and easy, 
cool and easy, Gabriel : dey's all bound for to 
come.' " 

This idea of taking even the blowing of the 
last trump cool and easy seemed to be so like 
the general negro style of attending to things, 
that it struck me as quite refreshing. As to 
singing, the most doleful words with the most 
lugubrious melodies seemed to be in favor. 

" Hark ! from the tombs a doleful sound," 

was a special favorite. With eyes shut, and 
mouth open, they would pour out a perfect 



294 PA LME TTO-LEA VES. 

Storm of minor-keyed melody on poor old Dr. 
Watts's hymn, mispronouncing every word, till 
the old doctor himself could not have told whe- 
ther they were singing English or Timbuctoo. 

Yet all this was done with a fervor and earnest 
solemnity that seemed to show that they found 
something in it, whether we could or not : who 
shall say ? A good old mammy we used to 
know found great refreshment in a hymn, the 
chorus of which was, — 

" Bust the bonds of dust and thunder ; 
Bring salvation from on high." 

Undoubtedly the words suggested to her very 
different ideas from what they did to us ; for she 
obstinately refused to have them exchanged for 
good English. But when the enlightened, wise, 
liberal, and refined for generations have found 
edification and spiritual profit from a service 
chanted in an unknown tongue, who shall say 



THE LABORERS OF THE SOUTH. 295 

that the poor negroes of our plantation did not 
derive real spiritual benefit from their night 
services ? It was at least an aspiration, a 
reaching and longing for something above ani- 
mal and physical good, a recognition of God and 
immortality, and a future beyond this earth, 
vague and indefinite though it were. 

As to the women, they were all of the class 
born and bred as field-hands. They were many 
of them as strong as men, could plough and 
chop and clealve with the best, and were held 
to be among the best field-laborers ; but, in all 
household affairs, they were as rough and un- 
skilled as might be expected. To mix meal, 
water, and salt into a hoe-cake, and to fry salt 
pork or ham or chicken, was the extent of their 
knowledge of cooking ; and as to sewing, it is 
a fortunate thing that the mild climate requires 
very slight covering. All of them practised, 
rudely, cutting, fitting, and making of garments 



296 PA LME TTO-LEA VES. 

to cover their children ; but we could see how 
hard was their task, after working all day in the 
field, to come home and get the meals, and then, 
after that, have the family sewing to do. In our 
view, woman never was made to do the work 
which supports the family ; and, if she do it, the 
family suffers more for want of the mother's 
vitality expended in work than it gains in the 
wages she receives. Some of the brightest and 
most intelligent negro men begin to see this, 
and to remove their wives from field-labor ; but 
on the plantation, as we saw it, the absence of 
the mother all day from home was the destruc- 
tion of any home-life or improvement. 

Yet, with all this, the poor things, many of 
them, showed a most affecting eagerness to be 
taught to read and write. We carried down 
and distributed a stock of spelling-books among 
them, which they eagerly accepted, and treasured 
with a sort of superstitious veneration ; and 



THE LABORERS OF THE SOUTH. 297 

Sundays, and evenings after work, certain of 
them would appear with them in hand, and 
earnestly beg to be taught. Alas ! we never felt 
so truly what the loss and wrong is of being de- 
prived of early education as when we saw how 
hard, how almost hopeless, is the task of acquisi- 
tion in mature life. When we saw the sweat 
start upon these black faces, as our pupils 
puzzled and blundered over the strange cabalis- 
tic forms of the letters, we felt a discouraged 
pity. What a dreadful piece of work the read- 
ing of the English language is ! Which of us 
would not be discouraged beginning the alpha- 
bet at forty } 

After we left, the same scholars were wont to 
surround one of the remaining ladies. Some- 
times the evening would be so hot and op- 
pressive, she would beg to be excused. " O 
misse, but two of us will fan you all the time ! " 
And " misse " could not but yield to the plea. 



298 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

One of the most dreaded characters on the 
place was the dairy-woman and cook Minnah. 
She had been a field-hand in North Carolina, 
and worked at cutting down trees, grubbing 
land, and mauling rails. She was a tall, lank, 
powerfully-built woman, with a pair of arms like 
windmill-sails, and a tongue that never hesitated 
to speak her mind to high or low. Democracy 
never assumes a more rampant form than in 
some of these old negresses, who would say 
their screed to the king on his throne, if they 
died for it the next minute. Accordingly, Min- 
nah's back was all marked and scored with the 
tyrant's answers to free speech. Her old mas- 
ter was accustomed to reply to her unpleasant 
observations by stretching her over a log, stak- 
ing down her hands and feet, and flaying her 
alive, as a most convincing style of argument. 
For all that, Minnah was neither broken nor 
humbled : she still asserted her rights as a 



THE LABORERS OF THE SOUTH. 299 

human being to talk to any other human being 
as seemed to her good and proper ; and many 
an amusing specimen of this she gave us. Min- 
nah had learned to do up gentlemen's shirts pass- 
ably, to iron and to cook after a certain fashion, 
to make butter, and do some other household 
tasks : and so, before the wives of the gentlemen 
arrived on the place, she had been selected as 
a sort of general housekeeper and manager in 
doors ; and, as we arrived on the ground first, 
we found Minnah in full command, — the only 
female presence in the house. 

It was at the close of a day in May, corre- 
sponding to our August, that Mrs. F and 

baby and myself, with sundry bales of furniture 
and household stuff, arrived at the place. We 
dropped down in a lazy little sail-boat which had 
lain half the day becalmed, with the blue, hazy 
shores on either side melting into indefinite 
distance, and cast anchor far out in the stream ; 



300 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

and had to be rowed in a smaller boat to the 
long wharf that stretched far out into the waters. 
Thence, in the thickening twilight, we ascended, 
passed through the belt of forest-trees that over- 
hung the shore, and crossed the wide fields of 
fine white sand devoted to the raising of cotton. 
The planter's house was a one-story cottage, far 
in the distance, rising up under the shelter of 
a lofty tuft of Spanish oaks. 

Never shall we forget the impression of 
weird and almost ludicrous dreariness which 
took possession of us as Mrs. F and my- 
self sat down in the wide veranda of the one- 
story cottage to wait for the gentlemen, who 
had gone down to assist in landing our trunks 
and furniture. The black laborers were coming 
up from the field ; and, as one and another 
passed by, they seemed blacker, stranger, and 
more dismal, than any thing we had ever seen. 

The women wore men's hats and boots, and 



THE LABORERS OF THE SOUTH. 3OI 

had the gait and stride of men ; but now and 
then an old hooped petticoat, or some cast-ofF, 
thin, bedraggled garment that had once been 
fine, told the tale of sex, and had a wofully 
funny effect. 

As we sat waiting, Minnah loomed up upon 
us in the twilight veranda like a gaunt 
Libyan sibyl, walking round and round, sur- 
veying us with apparent curiosity, and respond- 
ing to all our inquiries as to who and what she 
was by a peculiarly uncanny chuckle. It ap- 
peared to amuse her extremely that Mr. 

F had gone off and left the pantry locked 

up, so that she could not get us any supper ; we 
being faint and almost famished with our day's 
sail. The sight of a white baby dressed in 
delicate white robes, with lace and embroidery, 
also appeared greatly to excite her ; and she 
stalked round and round with a curious simmer 
of giggle, appearing and disappearing at un- 



302 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

certain intervals, like a black sprite, during the 

mortal hour and a half that it cost our friends to 

I 

land the goods from the vessel. 

After a while, some supper was got for us in 
a wide, desolate apartment, fitted up with a 
small cooking-stove in the corner. 

Never shall we forget the experience of en- 
deavoring to improvise a corn-cake the next 
morning for breakfast. 

We went into the room, and found the table 
standing just as we had left it the night before, — 
not a dish washed, not a thing done in the way 
of clearing. On inquiry for Minnah, she was 
gone out to milking. It appeared that there 
were sixteen cows to be milked before her re- 
turn. A little colored girl stood ready to wait 
on us with ample good nature. 

" Lizzie," said we, *' have you corn-meal t " 

"Oh, yes'm ! " and she brought it just as the 
corn had been ground, with the bran unsifted. 



THE LABORERS OF THE SOUTH. 303» 

" A sieve, Lizzie." 

It was brought 

" A clean pan, Lizzie. Quick ! '* 

"All right," said Lizzie: "let me get a pail of 
water." The water was to be drawn from a deep 
well in the yard. That done, Lizzie took a pan, 
went out the door, produced a small bit of rag, 
and rinsed the pan, dashing the contents upon 
the sand. 

" Lizzie, haven't you any dish-cloth ? " 

" No'm." 

" No towels ? " 

" No'm." 

" Do you always wash dishes this way ? " 

" Yes'm." 

" Well, then, wash this spoon and these two 
bake-pans," 

Lizzie, good-natured and zealous as the day 
is long, bent over her pail, and slopped and 
scrubbed with her bit of rag. 



304 PALMETTO-LEAVES. 

" Now for a pan of sour milk," said we. 

It was brought, with saleratus and other con- 
diments ; and the cake was made. 

But, on examination, the flues of the little 
cooking-stove were so choked with the resinous 
soot of the " light-wood " which had been used 
in it, that it would scarcely draw at all ; and 
the baking did not progress as in our nice 
Stuart stove in our Northern home. Still the 
whole experience was so weirdly original, that, 
considering this was only a picnic excursion, we 
rather enjoyed it. 

When we came to unpack china and crockery 
and carpets, bureau and bedsteads and dressing- 
glass, Minnah's excitement knew no bounds. 
Evidently she considered these articles (cast-off 
remnants of our Northern home) as the height 
of splendor. 

When our upper chamber was matted, and 
furnished with white curtains and shades, and 



THE LABORERS OF THE SOUTH. 305 

bed, chairs, and dressing-glass, Minnah came in 
to look; and her delight was boundless. 

"Dear me! O Lord, O Lord!" she ex- 
claimed, turning round and round. " Dese yer 
Northern ladies — they hes every thing, and 
they does every thing ! " 

More especially was she taken with the 
pictures we hung on the walls. Before one of 
these (Raphael's Madonna of the Veil) Minnah 
knelt down in a kind of ecstatic trance, and 
thus delivered herself: — 

" O good Lord ! if there ain't de Good Man 
when he was a baby ! How harmless he lies 
there ! so innocent ! And here we be, we wicked 
sinners, turning our backs on him, and going to 
the Old Boy. O Lord, O Lord ! we ought to 
be better than we be : we sartin ought." 

This invocation came forth with streaming 
tears in the most natural way in the world ; and 
Minnah seemed, for the time being, perfectly 



306 PALMETTO-LEA VES, 

subdued. It is only one of many instances 
we have seen of the overpowering influence of 
works of art on the impressible nervous system 
of the negro. 

But it is one thing to have an amusing and 
picturesque specimen of a human being, as 
Minnah certainly was, and another to make one 
useful in the traces of domestic life. 

As the first white ladies upon the ground, 
Mrs. F and myself had the task of organiz- 
ing this barbaric household, and of bringing it 
into the forms of civilized life. We commenced 
with the washing. 

Before the time of our coming, it had been 
customary for the gentlemen to give their 
washing into the hands of Minnah or Judy, to 
be done at such times and in such form and 
manner as best suited them. 

The manner which did suit them best was 
to put all the articles to soak indefinitely, in 



THE LABORERS OF THE SOUTH. 307 

soapsuds, till such time as to them seemed good. 
On being pressed for some particular article, and 
roundly scolded by any of the proprietors, they 
would get up a shirt, a pair of drawers, a collar 
or two, with abundant promises for the rest 
when they had time. 

The helpless male individuals of the establish- 
ments had no refuge from the feminine ruses 
and expedients, and the fifty incontrovertible 
reasons which were always on hand to prove to 
them that things could be done no other way than 
just as they were done ; and, in fact, found it 
easier to get their washing back again by bland- 
ishments than by bullying. 

We ladies announced a regular washing-day, 
and endeavored to explain it to our kitchen 
cabinet ; our staff consisting of Minnah and 
Judy, detailed for house-service. 

Judy was a fat, lazy, crafty, roly-poly negress, 
the Florida wife of the foreman Mose, and 



308 PALMETTO-LEA FES. 

devoted to his will and pleasure in hopes to sup- 
plant the " Virginny " and " Carliny " wives. 
Judy said yes to every thing we proposed ; but 
Minnah was " kinky " and argumentative : but 
finally, when we represented to her that the 
proposed arrangement was customary in good 
Northern society, she gave her assent. 

We first proceeded to make a barrel of soda 
washing-soap in a great iron sugar-kettle, which 
stood out under the fig-trees, and which had 
formerly been used for evaporating sugar. 

Minnah took the greatest interest in the 
operation, and, when the soap was finished, 
took the boiling liquid in pailfuls, setting them 
on the top of her head, and marching off to the 
barrel in the house with them, without ever 
lifting a finger. 

We screamed after her in horror, — 

"Minnah, Minnah! If that should fall, it 
would kill you ! " 



THE LABORERS OF THE SOUTH. 309 

A laugh of barbaric exultation was the only 
response, as she actually persisted in carrying 
pailful after pailful of scalding soap on her head 
till all was disposed of 

The next day the washing was all brought out 

under the trees and sorted, Mrs. F and 

myself presiding ; and soon Minnah and Judy 
were briskly engaged at their respective tubs. 
For half an hour, " all went merry as a marriage- 
bell." Judy was about half through her first 
tubful, when Mose came back from his morn- 
ing turn in the fields, and summoned her to come 
home and get his breakfast. With Judy's very 
leisurely and promiscuous habits of doing busi- 
ness, this took her away for half the forenoon. 
Meanwhile, Minnah murmured excessively at 
being left alone, and more especially at the con- 
tinuous nature of the task. 

Such a heap of clothes to be washed all in 
one day! It was a mountain of labor in Minnah's 



3 lO PALME TTO-LEA VES. 

imagination ; and it took all our eloquence and 
our constant presence to keep her in good 
humor. We kept at Minnah as the only means 
of keeping her at her work. 

But, after all, it was no bad picnic to spend a 
day in the open air in the golden spring-time of 
Florida. The birds were singing from every 
covert ; the air was perfectly intoxicating in 
its dreamy softness ; and so we spread a camp 
for the baby, who was surrounded by a retinue 
of little giggling, adoring negroes, and gave 
ourselves up to the amusement of the scene. 
Our encampment was under the broad leaves 
of a group of fig-trees ; and we hung our 
clothes to dry on the sharp thorns of a gigantic 
clump of Yucca gloriosa, which made an admira- 
ble clothes-frame. 

By night, with chuckling admiration, Minnah 
surveyed a great basketful of clean clothes, — 
all done in one day. 



THE LABORERS OF THE SOUTH. 311 

The next day came the lesson on ironing; and 
the only means of securing Minnah and Judy 
to constant work at the ironing-table was the 
exercise of our own individual powers of enter- 
tainment and conversation. We had our own 
table, and ironed with them ; and all went well 
till Judy remembered she had preparations for 
Mose's dinner, and deserted. Minnah kept up 
some time longer ; till finally, when we went in 
the next room on an errand, she improved the 
opportunity to desert. On returning, we saw 
Minnah's place vacant, a half-finished shirt 
lying drying on the table. 

Searching and calling, we at last discovered 
her far in the distance, smoking her pipe, and 
lolling tranquilly over the fence of a small en- 
closure where were sixteen calves shut up to- 
gether, so that maternal longings might bring 
the cow mothers home to them at night. 

" Why, Minnah, what are you doing ? " we 
said as we came up breathless. 



3 1 2 PALME TTO-LEA VES. 

''■ Laws, missis, I wanted to feed my calves. I 
jest happened to think on't." And forthwith she 
turned, started to the barn, and came back with 
a perfect hay-mow on her head. Then, crossing 
the fence into the enclosure, she proceeded to 
make division of the same among the calves, 
who tumultuously surrounded her. She patted 
one, and cuffed another, and labored in a most 
maternal style to make them share their com- 
mons equally ; laughing in full content of heart, 
and appearing to have forgotten her ironing- 
table and all about it. 

It was in vain to talk. " She was tired iron- 
ing. Did anybody ever hear of doing up 
all one's things in a day } Besides, she 
wanted to see her calves : she felt just like it." 
And Minnah planted her elbows on the fence, 
and gazed and smoked and laughed, and talked 
baby-talk to her calves, till we were quite pro- 
voked ; yet we could not help laughing. In fact, 



THE LABORERS OF THE SOUTH. 313 

long before that day was done, we were out of 
breath, used up and exhausted with the strain 
of getting the work out of Minnah. It was the 
more tantahzing, as she could do with a fair 
amount of skill any thing she pleased, and 
could easily have done the whole in a day had 
she chosen. 

It is true, she was droll enough, in a literary 
and artistic view, to make one's fortune in a 
magazine or story ; but, when one had a house to 
manage, a practical humorist is less in point 
than in some other places. 

The fact was, Minnah, like all other women 
bred to the fields, abominated housework like a 
man. She could do here and there, and by fits 
and starts and snatches ; but to go on in any 
thing like a regular domestic routine was simply 
disgusting in her eyes. So, after a short period 
of struggle, it was agreed that Minnah was to 
go back to field-work, where she was one of the 



3 14 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

most valuable hands ; and a trained house- 
servant was hired from Jacksonville. 

Minnah returned to the field with enthusi- 
asm. We heard her swinging her long arms, 
and shouting to her gang, " Come on, den, boys 
and gals ! I'm for the fields ! I was born, I was 
raised, I was fairly begot, in de fields ; and I 
don't want none o' your housework." 

In time we obtained a cook from Jacksonville, 
trained, accomplished, neat, who made beauti- 
ful bread, biscuit, and rolls, and was a comfort 
to our souls. 

But this phoenix was soon called for by the 
wants of the time, and was worth more than we 
could give, and went from us to enjoy forty 
dollars per month as cook in a hotel. 

Such has been the good fortune of all the 
well-trained house-servants since emancipation. 
They command their own price. 

The untrained plantation hands and their 



THE LABORERS OF THE SOUTH. 315 

children are and will be just what education 
may make them. 

The education which comes to them from the 
State from being freemen and voters, able to 
make contracts, choose locations, and pursue their 
own course like other men, is a great deal ; and 
it is operating constantly and efficaciously. 

We give the judgment of a practical farmer 
accustomed to hire laborers at the North and 
the South ; and, as a result of five years' ex- 
periment on this subject, he says that the negro 
laborer carefully looked after is as good as any 
that can be hired at the North. 

In some respects they are better. As a class 
they are more obedient, better natured, more 
joyous, and easily satisfied. 

The question as to whether, on the whole, the 
negroes are valuable members of society, and 
increasing the material wealth of the State, is 
best answered by the returns of the Freedman's 



3 16 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

Savings and Trust Company, — an institution 
under the patronage of government. 

The report of this institution for the year 
1872 is before us ; and from this it appears that 
negro laborers in the different Southern States 
have deposited with this Trust Company this 
year the sum of thirty- one million two 

HUNDRED AND SIXTY THOUSAND FOUR HUNDRED 
AND NINETY-NINE DOLLARS. 

The report also shows, that, year by year, the 
amount deposited has increased. Thus, in 1867, 
it was only ^1,624,883 ; in 1868 it was three 
million odd; in 1869 it was seven million and 
odd ; in 1870, twelve million and odd ; in 1871, 
nineteen million and odd. 

These results are conclusive to the fact, that, 
as a body, the Southern laborers are a thrifty, 
industrious, advancing set ; and such as they 
are proved by the large evidence of these 
figures, such we have observed them in our 
more limited experience. 



THE LABORERS OF THE SOUTH. 317 

Our negro laborers, with all the inevitable de- 
fects of imperfect training, ignorance, and the 
negligent habits induced by slavery, have still 
been, as a whole, satisfactory laborers. They 
keep their contracts, do their work, and save 
their earnings. We could point to more than 
one black family about us steadily growing up 
to competence by industry and saving. 

All that is wanted to supply the South with a 
set of the most desirable skilled laborers is 
simply education. The negro children are 
bright ; they can be taught any thing : and if 
the whites, who cannot bear tropical suns and 
fierce extremes, neglect to educate a docile race 
who both can and will bear it for them, they 
throw away their best chance of success in a 
most foolish manner. No community that prop- 
erly and carefully educates the negro children 
now growing up need complain of having an 
idle, thriftless, dishonest population about them. 



3 1 8 PALMETTO-LEA VES. 

Common schools ought to prevent that. The 
teaching in the common schools ought to be 
largely industrial, and do what it can to prepare 
the children to get a living by doing something 
well. Practical sewing, cutting and fitting, for 
girls, and the general principles of agriculture 
for boys, might be taught with advantage. 

The negroes are largely accused of being 
thievish and dishonest. 

A priori we should expect that they would be 
so. We should imagine, that to labor without 
wages for generations, in a state of childish 
dependence, would so confuse every idea of 
right and wrong, that the negro would be a 
hopeless thief. 

Our own experience, however, is due in jus- 
tice to those we have known. 

On the first plantation, as we have said, were 
about thirty families from all the different 
Southern States. It might be supposed that 
they were a fair sample. 



THE LABORERS OF THE SOUTH. 319 

Now as to facts. It was the habit of the 
family to go to bed nights, and leave the house 
doors unlocked, and often standing wide open. 
The keys that locked the provisions hung up in 
a very accessible place ; and yet no robbery was 
ever committed. We used to set the breakfast- 
table over night, and leave it with all the silver 
upon it, yet lost nothing. 

In our own apartment we put our rings and 
pins on our toilet-cushions, as had been our 
habit. We had bits of bright calico and ribbons, 
and other attractive articles, lying about ; and 
the girl that did the chamber - work was 
usually followed by a tribe of little curious, 
observing negroes : and yet we never missed 
so much as a shred of calico. Neither was this 
because they did not want them ; for the gift of 
a strip of calico or ribbon would throw them 
into raptures : it was simply that they did not 
steal. 



3 20 PA LME TTO-LEA VES. 

Again : nothing is more common, when we 
visit at the North, than to have the com»plaint 
made that fruit is stolen out of gardens. We 
have had people tell us that the vexation of 
having fruit carried off was so great, that it 
took away all the pleasure of a garden. 

Now, no fruit is more beautiful, more tempt- 
ing, than the orange. We live in an orange- 
grove surrounded by negroes, and yet never have 
any trouble of this kind. We have often seen 
bags of fine oranges lying all night under the 
trees ; and yet never have we met with any per- 
ceptible loss. Certainly it is due to the negroes 
that we have known to say that they are above 
the average of many in the lower classes at 
the North for honesty. 

We have spoken now for the average negro : 
what we have said is by no means the best that 
can with truth be said of the finer specimens 
among them. 



THE LABORERS OF THE^SOUTH. 32 1 

We know some whose dignity of character, 
delicacy, good principle, and generosity, are 
admirable, and more to be admired because 
these fine traits have come up under the most 
adverse circumstances. 

In leaving this subject, we have only to repeat 
our conviction, that the prosperity of the more 
Southern States must depend, in a large degree, 
on the right treatment and education of the 
negro population. 




